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2 books match the query 'Wilder, Samuel'

cover of An Old Carriage with Curtains

An Old Carriage with Curtains

Ghassan Zaqtan

Seagull Books, 2023

The concluding novel in a trilogy that has become a landmark of Palestinian fiction.

An Old Carriage with Curtains is the third and final book in a masterful trilogy of novels encompassing the history of the people of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya. The novels trace the wandering trajectories and inner lives of characters connected to this village across decades, as well as the vicissitudes of historical change and displacement in the land. Through the return of a middle-aged man to the site of an ancient monastery in the hills near Jericho that he once visited as a boy, the incredibly vivid and surprising stories of Hind, a stage actress and brilliant storyteller, the stories of tortuous routes of checkpoints and bureaucratic blockages, and decades of Occupation, Zaqtan creates a narrative of personal reckoning and reflection.

The vectors of memory and historical reflection interweave in this dreamlike narrative, which delivers a singularly powerful depiction of subjective and collective experience in the face of devastating and sweeping historical change.
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cover of Where the Bird Disappeared

Where the Bird Disappeared

Ghassan Zaqtan

Seagull Books, 2018

This lyrical novel, set in the surroundings of the Palestinian village of Zakariyya, weaves a narrative rich in sensory detail yet troubled by the porousness of memory. It tells the story of the relationship between two figures of deep mythical resonance in the region, Yahya and Zakariyya, figures who live in the present but bear the names—and many traits—of two saints. Ranging from today into back to pre-1948 Palestine, the book presents both a compelling portrait of a contemporary village and a sacred geography that lies beyond and beneath the present state of the world. Sensual, rich in allusion, yet at the same time focused on the struggles of today, Where the Bird Disappeared is a powerful novel of both connection and dispossession.
 
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