A Balcony Over the Fakihani: Three Novellas

By Liana Badr

Book Overview

REISSUE The title story of Liyana Badr's remarkable collection of three short novellas interweaves the narratives of three Palestinians, two women and one man, relating their successive uprootings: from Palestine in 1948, from Jordan during Black September in 1970, to their final exile in Beirut. Badr's intensively evocative contrapuntal style allows the reader to glimpse the joy and despair of these lives rooted in exile and resistance. There is an attention to detail in these stories that brings the grand narrative of Palestinian history alive: a horrified mother spotting a white hair on her baby's head the morning after a mortar attack in Beirut; a woman hiding a Palestinian resistance fighter's gun moments before he is picked up by the Jordanian security police. The final movement of A Balcony over the Fakihani is a deeply poetic and harrowing account of Israeli air strikes during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, told from the perspective we so rarely encounter: that of the disenfranchised people whose courage and suffering cannot fail to move the readers of this extraordinary book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566564646
• ISBN13: 9781566564649
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group, Incorporated
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Elegantly written and well-translated novel

Liyanah Badr shares the experience of a Palestinian woman who has lived the resistance to Israeli occupation in its earliest stages. She provides insight into a world very few western readers will ever have exposure to, although it defines a critical period in the history and lives of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs. Her writing is lucid and quitely powerful, and her characters will stay with you for a long time.