<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>Outcast</TitleText>

City Lights Books onix@onixsuite.com 20130217 eng

GCDS-9780872864818 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100223370 02 0872864812 03 9780872864818 15 9780872864818 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>Outcast</TitleText> 1 A01 Ballas, Shimon Shimon Ballas Shimon Ballas was born in Baghdad in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1951. Before retirement, he taught Arab Literature there, and now spends part of the year in Paris, where he does most of his writing. 2 B06 Alcalay, Ammiel Ammiel Alcalay Ammiel Alcalay is poet, translator, critic, and scholar who teaches at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of, among other books, After Jews and Arabs (1993); the cairo notebooks (1993); Memories of Our Future (1999); from the warring factions (2002); and Scrapmetal (2007). A new book of essays, A Little History, is due out in 2010. He was one of the initiators of the Poetry Is News Coalition, and helped to organize the Olson Now project. He has recently launched Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, a publishing venture whose mission is to retrieve and make available key texts falling widely under the rubric of the New American Poetry. 3 B06 Shelach, Oz Oz Shelach Oz Shelach was born in West Jerusalem in 1968, has been a journalist and editor for Israeli radio and magazines, and runs an online news service and art gallery at http://www.oznik.com. He currently lives in New York. 01 eng 308 01 Outcast is narrated by Haroun Soussan, a Jewish convert to Islam. Soussan’s character is based on a historical figure, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa, who converted to Islam in the 1930s and whose work ended up being used as propaganda during the era of Saddam Hussein. The narrator is a civil engineer and historian who’s just completed his life’s work, The Jews and History. The book opens with his getting an award from the President (Saddam Hussein) during the period of the Iran-Iraq War. The text we are reading, the novel, is his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, where he explores his own personal and political history, including his relationship with his daughter and his friends, among them a militant communist in political exile in Eastern Europe. Soussan’s narrative moves in and out of the present, the recent and more distant past, providing a unique and intimate chronicle of Iraq’s contemporary political history. His friends and comrades provide pathways into different aspects of Iraqi history, political resistance, repression, and allegiance.Praise for Outcast: “Tells readers more about Iraq than many commentaries being offered up these days” – Le Monde " . . . reveals more about modern Iraq than nearly all Americans put together know, and Ballas creates one of the most relevant, most important characters in contemporary fiction." – Booklist, Starred Review "Ballas fictionalizes the life of Ahmad Soussa, an Iraqi Jew who converted to Islam in the 1930s. . . . his writing . . . is immediate, vivid and richly elusive . . . As a case study in the rationalization of personal and political contradiction, the novel is entirely clear." – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Outcast is the fictional memoir of Haroun Saussan, an Iraqi academic, a grandfather, a civil engineer and historian, a Jew who converted to Islam . . . He finds himself caught between identities: 'a Muslim come from without.' Disturbing dreams help him to unify the disparate parts of his character and soothe his many regrets." – Los Angeles Times <blockquote> "Reading Shimon Ballas is a journey into the unknown part of the picture. This Iraqi writer who immigrated to Israel when he was a young man represents in his writing the none said in modern Hebrew literature. For the Palestinian victims who became a minority in their homeland, he is one of them, as he is the unspoken voice of conscience for Israeli Jews. This combination has made Ballas’s voice unique in Middle Eastern writing, and completely outside the framework of the official political, biographical, and creative life of contemporary Israel. Reading this literature has been a way for me to discover my mirror and recover the other half of my soul." – Elias Khoury, author of Gate of the Sun </blockquote> Shimon Ballas was born in Baghdad in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1951. Before retirement, he taught Arab Literature there, and now spends part of the year in Paris, where he does most of his writing. 02 " . . . reveals more about modern Iraq than nearly all Americans put together know, and Ballas creates one of the most relevant, most important characters in contemporary fiction." -- Booklist, Starred Review 08 "Reading Shimon Ballas is a journey into the unknown part of the picture. This Iraqi writer who immigrated to Israel when he was a young man represents in his writing the none said in modern Hebrew literature. For the Palestinian victims who became a minority in their homeland, he is one of them, as he is the unspoken voice of conscience for Israeli Jews. This combination has made Ballas’s voice unique in Middle Eastern writing, and completely outside the framework of the official political, biographical, and creative life of contemporary Israel. Reading this literature has been a way for me to discover my mirror and recover the other half of my soul." Elias Khoury, author of Gate of the Sun 08 " . . . reveals more about modern Iraq than nearly all Americans put together know, and Ballas creates one of the most relevant, most important characters in contemporary fiction."  Booklist 08 "Ballas fictionalizes the life of Ahmad Soussa, an Iraqi Jew who converted to Islam in the 1930s. . . . his writing . . . is immediate, vivid and richly elusive . . . As a case study in the rationalization of personal and political contradiction, the novel is entirely clear." Publishers Weekly 08 "Outcast is the fictional memoir of Haroun Saussan, an Iraqi academic, a grandfather, a civil engineer and historian, a Jew who converted to Islam and the author of several books, including The Jews in History and My Path to Islam. Author Shimon Ballas bases his protagonist on Ahmad Soussa, a writer who converted to Islam in the 1930s and whose work, like Saussan's, was used (perverted) to support Saddam Hussein. Saussan, who does not consider himself an 'ideological man' but merely a scholar, is appalled to see his history of the Jews called a 'jihad against the Jews.' The novel opens in Iraq, at a ceremony in his honor, attended by the president. Saussan, alienated from his wife and daughter, feels like a stranger in his own home. He remembers his childhood in the Bedouin village of al-Hila, 'a sleepy town on the bank of the Euphrates.' He remembers his days as a student in America and his marriage to an American woman. He misses the 2-year-old son he left to return to Iraq alone. He finds himself caught between identities: 'a Muslim come from without.' Disturbing dreams help him to unify the disparate parts of his character and soothe his many regrets. Los Angeles Times 08 " . . . at its core Outcast powerfully encapsulates the dilemma of minorities grappling with assimilation. Soussan loves Iraq and is hurt by the reluctance of many fellow Jews to identify wholly with their country. He advocates complete integration and the revocation of minority privileges." Rayyan Al-Shawaf, The Tennessean 08 "The story gives in inside look into life in Iraq before the war, leading up to and during Saddam Hussein’s reign...A good read for you historical/political buffs. Check it out." —Adrione N. Council Feminist Review 08 ". . . [Outcast] attempt[s] to bring to readers a consideration of ambiguities much grayer than the black and white of syndicated column and partisan punditry. . . Soussan, like Shimon Ballas, his creator, is a figure of extreme compromise, of virtuosic doubletalk, and unpracticed triple identity (as Iraqi, Jew and “Arab,” or Muslim). . . [Outcast is] indelibly engaging and violently immediate: If you read [it], you will lose sleep; the morning paper can always be used as a bookmark." —Joshua Cohen The Jewish Daily Forward 08 ". . . it is hard to keep in mind that this is a novel because it is so rich in detail about what Iraqis are thinking and feeling. . . Through his account we are privy to many incidents and ideas that provide an intimate picture of Iraq and the turbulent times that country has had to endure. . . The author himself immigrated to Israel from Baghdad and was prolific in Arabic before switching to Hebrew. He seems uniquely qualified to present the dichotomy that unfolds in these pages. There is much to learn from and ponder in this work." —Barbara Lingens BookLoons 08 “But if the less knowledgeable reader has to take a breath now and again it is because Shimon Ballas has brilliantly succeeded in constructing a feel of the ski slope, chasms, and jumps of haunted memory. …Ballas gives his diarist a fluency which glides between the formal and the pensively emotional, and his translators serve him well.” —Judith Kazantzis Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature 07 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100223370/images/87286100223370S.gif http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100223370 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20070422 08 16 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 20070422 01 02 13.95 USD