A review by uncle_shai
Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua
5.0
Great book. Coming of age story where the protagonist's struggle with his identities: cultural, ethnic and national is a painful process that manifests in significant self-loathing.
As a fan of the author, Sayed Kashua's sit-com Arab Labor, I find that a coming of age novel is a richer and deeper place to deal with the issue of self-loathing. In Arab Labor, we meet a self-hating bafoonish Jew-wannabee adult, Amjad, who is a successful journalist. He's balanced by his wife who feels perfectly comfortable in her own Arab Palestinian skin. It does work as a sit-com and there are even deeply moving scenes. But too few of them and Amjad is too often insufferable. Dancing Arabs conversely can hold the self-love and self hate inside the same person and deal with that struggle more deeply and intelligently. Also appropriate in the Dancing Arabs is that we know the narrator from a child through to his mid twenties. The issues of identity work well in a coming-of-age novel.
The novel reminded me some of Catcher in the Rye. The wry cynicism, disgust, and longing are shared by both books. As an adult at least, I find it a lot easier to feel compassion for Dancing Arabs' unnamed narrator than for Holden Caulfield.
My emotional response to Kashua's narrator is to want to reassure him that "everything will be okay." But then I fall into my own despair that to tell him so would be a lie.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel in Dancing Arabs. But you certainly feel like you've been enriched by a truly human whose perspective and difficult situation you werer unawares of before you read it.
As a fan of the author, Sayed Kashua's sit-com Arab Labor, I find that a coming of age novel is a richer and deeper place to deal with the issue of self-loathing. In Arab Labor, we meet a self-hating bafoonish Jew-wannabee adult, Amjad, who is a successful journalist. He's balanced by his wife who feels perfectly comfortable in her own Arab Palestinian skin. It does work as a sit-com and there are even deeply moving scenes. But too few of them and Amjad is too often insufferable. Dancing Arabs conversely can hold the self-love and self hate inside the same person and deal with that struggle more deeply and intelligently. Also appropriate in the Dancing Arabs is that we know the narrator from a child through to his mid twenties. The issues of identity work well in a coming-of-age novel.
The novel reminded me some of Catcher in the Rye. The wry cynicism, disgust, and longing are shared by both books. As an adult at least, I find it a lot easier to feel compassion for Dancing Arabs' unnamed narrator than for Holden Caulfield.
My emotional response to Kashua's narrator is to want to reassure him that "everything will be okay." But then I fall into my own despair that to tell him so would be a lie.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel in Dancing Arabs. But you certainly feel like you've been enriched by a truly human whose perspective and difficult situation you werer unawares of before you read it.