Cry in a Long Night: And Four Stories - Softcover

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1850773432 ISBN 13: 9781850773436

Publisher: Darf Publishers, 2022

Synopsis

Jabra’s debut novel, first published in 1955 and called by Edward Said “one of the principal successes of Arabic artistic prose and drama,” introduced stream of consciousness, flashback and interior monologue to the Arabic novel and set the stage for the outpouring of excellent modern Arabic prose in the decades that followed. In the first novel by the Palestinian author Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Amin Samaa walks the length of his native city on a portentous night. Amin is headed to the house of Inayat Yasser, an aristocratic heiress who has hired him to help her write a book on the history of her Ottoman family, now fallen on hard times. On his way there, Amin recalls his childhood in a nearby village and the city slum his family had to flee to after his father died. Old friends, thieves and madames attempt to waylay him. And the haunting atmosphere of the city gives rise to memories of Amin’s wife Sumaya, whose sudden disappearance two years before has left him at a loss. Sumaya’s sudden reappearance forces Amin into a decision that will change his life forever. In a novel written just two years before the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, the events and characters lead to a momentous conclusion. Jabra brought modernist techniques into modern Arabic literature: the reminiscences of D. H. Lawrence, the introspective wanderer of James Joyce, and the acerbic wit and country-house feel of early Aldous Huxley. This classic of Arabic literature is not to be missed.

About this title

About the Author

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was born on 28 August 1919 in Adana in the French Mandate of Cilicia. He won a British Council scholarship to study at University College of the South-West in Exeter (1939-40) and Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, where he earned a BA in English literature in 1943. Jabra returned to Jerusalem in 1943 and taught English at the Rashidiya College. In January 1948, Jabra and his family fled Jerusalem for Bethlehem. He won a Rockefeller Fellowship to study literary criticism at Harvard University from 1952-1954. In addition to his debut novel, Cry in a Long Night (1955), Jabra published five others: Hunters in a Narrow Street (1960), The Ship (1970), In Search of Walid Masoud (1978), The Other Rooms (1986), and The Journals of Sarab Affan (1992). Jabra wrote two autobiographies – The First Well (1987) and Princesses’ Street (1994) – and numerous collections of essays and criticism. Jabra was also a prolific translator, translating over thirty works of English and French literature, criticism, and scholarship into Arabic. He died in Baghdad in December 1994. William Tamplin is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD in 2020. He is the author of Poet of Jordan: The Political Poetry of Muhammad Fanatil al-Hajaya (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

Edition details

• Publisher: Darf Publishers
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1850773432
• ISBN 13: 9781850773436
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240