Ghassan Kanafani

This collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the movie The Dupes (1972, directed by Tewfik Saleh). Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse...'" (1961), "A Hand in the Grave" (1962), "The Falcon" (1961), "Letter from Gaza" (1956), and an excerpt from Umm Saad (1969). In the unsparing clarity of his writing, Kanafani offers the reader a gritty look at the agonized world of Palestine and the adjoining Middle East. Born in Acre (northern Palestine) in 1936, Ghassan Kanafani was a major spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and founding editor of its weekly magazine Al-Hadaf. His novels, short stories, and plays have been published in sixteen languages. He was assassinated in a car-bomb explosion in Beirut in 1972.

تجسد حب كنفاني للعودة إلى بلده، فهي تدور بمعظمها في الطريق إلى حيفا عندما يقرر سعيد وزوجته الذهاب إلى هناك، وتفقد بيتهما الذي تركاه وفيه طفل رضيع أثناء معركة حيفا عام 1948. وتعطي الرواية حيزاً كبيراً للمفهوم الذهبي للوطنية والمواطنة وتبين من خلال التداعي قسوة الظروف التي أدت إلى مأساة عائلة سعيد وتطرح مفهوماً مختلفاً عما كان سائداً لمعنى الوطن في الخطاب الفلسطيني.تم تناول القصه في عمليين سينمائيين الاول يحمل نفس عنوان الروايه من إخراج قاسم حول، وإنتاج مؤسسة الأرض للإنتاج السينمائي عام 1981م. حصد الفيلم أربع جوائز عالميةوالاخر بعنوان ""المتبقي "" من أخراج الإيرانى سيف الله داد وإنتاج إيراني سوري عام 1994م.تم تناول القصه أيضا في عمل تلفزيوني للمخرج السوري باسل الخطيب .وفي عمل مسرحي أردني أيضا

Translated into English for the first time after its publication in 1967, Ghassan Kanafani's On Zionist Literature makes an incisive analysis of the body of literary fiction written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Interweaving his literary criticism of works by George Eliot, Arthur Koestler, and many others with a historical materialist narrative, Kanafani identifies the political intent and ideology of Zionist literature, demonstrating how the myths used to justify the Zionist-imperialist domination of Palestine first emerged and were repeatedly propagated in popular literary works in order to generate support for Zionism and shape the Western public’s understanding of it.

Politics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. Fadl al-Naqib has reflected that Kanafani wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century. In Palestine's Children, each story involves a child a child who is victimized by political events and circumstances, but who nevertheless participates in the struggle toward a better future. As in Kanafani's other fiction, these stories explore the need to recover the past the lost homeland by action. At the same time, written by a major talent, they have a universal appeal. This edition includes the translators' contextual introduction and a short biography of the author.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Palestinian writers themselves have been in the forefront of those who have addressed themselves to the tragedy of their own people, and in a variety of genres and styles… While all these writers display a sense of "commitment" to the cause of their people, there is one author who, in the words of the Egyptian writer, Yusuf Idris, has taken this cause to the utmost limit of martyrdom: Ghassan Kanafani. From the introduction by Roger Allen All That's Left to You presents the vivid story of twenty-four hours in the real and remembered lives of a brother and sister living in Gaza and separated from their family. The desert and time emerge as characters as Kanafani speaks through the desert, the brother, and the sister to build the powerful rhythm of the narrative. The Palestinian attachment to land and family, and the sorrow over their loss, are symbolized by the young man's unremitting anger and shame over his sister's sexual disgrace. This collection of stories provides evidence to the English-reading public of Kanafani's position within modern Arabic literature. Not only was he committed to portraying the miseries and aspirations of his people, the Palestinians, in whose cause he died, but he was also an innovator within the extensive world of Arabic fiction.

رجال في الشمس هي الصراخ الشرعي المفقود، إنها الصوت الفلسطيني الذي ضاع طويلاً في خيام التشرد، والذي يختنق داخل عربة يقودها خصي هزم مرة أولى وسيقود الجميع إلى الموت. وهي كرواية لا تدعي التعبير عن الواقع الفلسطيني المعاش في علاقاته المتشابكة، إنها إطار رمزي لعلاقات متعددة تتمحور حول الموت الفلسطيني، وحول ضرورة الخروج منه باتجاه اكتشاف الفعل التاريخي أو البحث عن هذا الفعل انطلاقاً من طرح السؤال البديهي: "لماذا لم يدقوا جدران الخزان؟"

*short story ___ you and I and the others of our age were too young to understand what the story meant from beginning to end… “The Land of the Sad Orange” is one of Kanafani's early stories. It depicts the impact of deracination on the Palestinians after Israeli forces took over Palestine in 1948. In this story Kanafani mixes artistic reality with history. Though the story tells the suffering of a middle-class family, it is exemplary of the experience of thousands of displaced families, who suffered the humiliation of leaving their country, following the 1948 defeat of the Arab armies and the creation of the state of Israel.