Black Cat
Black Cat
Black Cat
Let It Be Morning
by Sayed Kashua Translated from Hebrew by Miriam ShlesingerSoon to be a major motion picture from award–winning director Eran Kolirin
Books
Black Cat
Black Cat
Black Cat
In his searing new novel, the young Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua introduces a disillusioned journalist who returns to his hometown, an Arab village within Israel, hoping to reclaim the simplicity of life among kin. But the prodigal son returns to a place where the people are petty and provincial and everything is smaller than he remembers. When Israeli tanks surround the village without explanation, the community devolves into a Darwinian jungle, and the journalist and his family must negotiate the fault lines of a world on the brink of implosion. With the enduring moral and literary power of Albert Camus and George Orwell, Let It Be Morning proves Sayed Kashua to be a fearless, prophetic observer of a political and human quagmire that offers no easy answers.
Praise
“It is a thicker, richer, more cynical and at he same time more imaginative book than Kashua’s previous effort, which was already accomplished to start… A complicated study of betrayal… He spikes his novel with strong, pungent anecdotes and observations. Let It Be Morning is as much about humiliation, disappointment, fear, hope and fleeting moments of euphoric possibility as it is about Middle East politics… At times uproariously funny, at others wrenchingly poignant, Let It Be Morning is a queasy read, very much by design and very much worth the discomfort.”–Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Daily Star
“A haunting and highly-disturbing narrative… What makes the story flow as beautifully as the soft welcoming sounds of running water is its skilled structure and deep probing reflections…[You feel an] empathy that tugs and tears at the heartstrings. This story cannot be faulted. In its underlying description of truth where pain was pictured as real and raw, I found no shortcomings. None at all.”—Suzan Abrams, Café Arabica
“An intimate, eye-opening portrait of the conflicted allegiances of the Israeli Arabs, proving once again that Sayed Kashua is a fearless, prophetic observer of a political and human quagmire that offers no easy answers.”—Pacific University Book Club
“Let It Be Morning offers a riveting study of human values collapsing under inhuman conditions, with unsuitable messiahs, or ‘heroes of resistance’, rising in the vacuum… Reminiscent of Orwell and Kafka along with Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.”—Maya Jaggi, The Guardian (UK)
“Sharp, powerful, and uncompromising… One of the most potent and impressive novels written in Hebrew in the last several years.”—Ha’aretz (Israel)
Praise for Dancing Arabs:
“Books like this one, that tell the stories of war through the eyes of children, are the textbooks for future generations. They carry the cultural information, those memes that are missing from conventional, nonfiction accounts.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
“A bracingly candid lamentation… [that] stares unflinchingly at the many ugly realities on both sides of an eternal national crisis.”—The Sun (Baltimore)
Trailer for the film adaptation
Awards
Short-listed for the 2008 Dublin Impac Award
