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I Saw Ramallah
Translated by Ahdaf Soueif
Foreword by Edward W. Said
183 Pages, 0.31 x 0.19 in
- Paperback
- 9789774247552
- January 2003
- Region: Egypt
LE150.00
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Awarded the 1997 Naguib Mahfouz Award for Literature
“One of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement that we now have.”—Edward Said
The first narrative work of the well-known Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti is an autobiographical memoir about the ironies of homecoming. The bridge that Barghouti crosses as a young man leaving his country in 1966 to pursue university studies in Cairo is the same bridge that he uses to cross back in 1996 after thirty long years in the Diaspora.
I Saw Ramallah is about home and homelessness. The harrowing experience of a Palestinian, denied the most elementary human rights in his occupied country and in exile alike, is transformed into a humanist work. Palestine has been appropriated, dispossessed, renamed, changed beyond recognition by the usurpers, yet from the heap of broken images and shattered homes, Barghouti repossesses his homeland.
Mourid Barghouti (Author) (1944–2021) was born in the West Bank, and graduated from the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University in 1967. His poems have been published in Beirut, Amman, and Cairo since 1972, and his Collected Works were published in Cairo in 1997. He is the author of I Was Born There, I Was Born Here (AUC Press, 2014).
Ahdaf Soueif (Translated by) is the bestselling author of In the Eye of the Sun and The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. She has been awarded the Blue Metropolis Literary Prize (in Montreal) and the Constantin Cavafis Award (in Cairo and Athens), and is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, for which she was awarded the Hay Medal for Festivals in 2017.
Edward W. Said (Foreword by) (1935–2003), an internationally renowned literary and cultural critic, was professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books, including Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism.
"Marvelous. . . . A beautifully constructed and moving memoir."—Al-Ahram Weekly
"The most eloquent statement in English of what it is like to be Palestinian today. . . . no other book so well explains the background of recent events in Palestine/Israel."—Times Literary Supplement
"Forceful, lyrical, evocative. . . . A wonderful read."—Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
"The passionate pain of exile, recounted at the end of the day by a true poet."—John Berger
"The English translation, artistically rendered by the novelist, Adhaf Soueif, conveys the beauty of the Arabic language without sacrificing the accuracy of the author's thoughts and the depth of his emotions."—Middle East Journal
“Stirring. . . . Poignant. . . . Compelling. . . . I Saw Ramallah is a magnificent addition to world literature. It is picturesque and lifelike. Its evocative images touch, move, and inspire.”—Middle East Studies Association Bulletin
"The theme is not merely the physical violence of occupation, but rather occupation’s ability to rob the Palestinian of his simplest and even banal connections to self and place. . . . The translation by Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif is more than convincing: it is elegant and, at times, astonishing."—Aljadid
"A rare memoir. . . . Humane and eloquent." —In These Times
‘’Joins elements of autobiography to sophisticated narrative techniques with remarkable power.’’—Abdel Moneim Tallima
"I Saw Ramallah is a defiant rejection, through the recording of experience and feeling, of the efforts of 'policy makers' to dehumanize the objects of their repression." —The Egyptian Reporter
‘’He depicts the topography of his homeland and the richness of its folklore. His recollections are expressed with intimacy, but without sentimentality; with emotion, but without bitterness.’’ —Ferial Ghazoul
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