Samiha KhraisThe Tree Stump: An Arabic Historical Novel by Nesreen Akhtarkhavari

Abstract

Salo is joined by other refugees from various attacks orchestrated by the Yerezis’ malefactor and the warlord Dark Sun, with chapters regularly switching perspectives to tell an engaging story of young people growing into adulthood and newfound powers. With Scarlet Odyssey, Rwizi has written a novel that is expertly plotted, incredibly well thought out where magical and cultural systems are concerned, and also quite bloody. While not as literarily deft as Marlon James’s recent Black Leopard, Red Wolf (see WLT, Spring 2019, 80) or Jemisin ’s record-breaking Broken Earth trilogy, Scarlet Odyssey deserves to be recognized as a powerful force in the growing Afrofantasy movement. Sean Guynes Michigan State University Samiha Khrais The Tree Stump: An Arabic Historical Novel Trans. Nesreen Akhtarkhavari. East Lansing. Michigan State University Press. 2019. 174 pages. SAMIHA KHRAIS is a Jordanian novelist whose work has the imprimatur of those with heft, political and cultural, in her native land. The winner of, among other awards, the Al-Hussein Medal for Distinguished Creativity (2015), she addresses herself in The Tree Stump to the question of Jordan’s origins in the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Turks. It is perhaps inevitable, then, that one has a slight sense of reading, if not an official account, then at least one that will not displease her compatriots or the (admittedly largely benevolent) dynasty that rules over them. However, the historical background to the creation of the only surviving Hashemite dynasty, that of Iraq having been bloodily overthrown in 1958 and the Kingdom of Syria strangled at birth, is further complicated by the controversial figure of T. E. Lawrence, prominent in the minds of many putative readers of this translation because of a memorable film and in the minds of a few because of a brilliant, if idiosyncratic, autobiographical account of his role in the region, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). Indeed, the wish to provide an alternative account to Lawrence’s, one rooted in the experiences of Arabs, is avowedly central to the book. Information obtained during Khrais’s meetings with tribal elders “challenged the narrative that Lawrence and most Western historians provided,” resulting in a novel that celebrates the valor of Arab warriors fighting for their freedom and culture and the inspiration given by their strong women, whose strength, contra stereotyping views of the West, “is perceived as a source of honor and pride for the men.” One would expect the role Books in Review ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature Ed. André Naffis-Sahely London. Pushkin Press. 2020. 352 pages. HARDLY A LITERARY POSITION exists that trumps that of the exile and the émigré. Of course, not every exile succeeds in fashioning from their banishment a new whole or fresh start, imprinting elsewhere; those who do succeed can acquire an aura akin to that of a saint. In this anthology, André Naffis-Sahely sizes up the phenomenon of exile across ages, cultures, and causes, from the ancient and biblical through the Dark Ages and into the age of nations, considering political, religious , and personal reasons for exile, right up to more contemporary notions of “cosmopolitanism and rootlessness.” Many, but by no means all, of the authors of passages in this volume have themselves been exiles, including Naffis-Sahely himself. Yet in every case, care is taken to present excerpts that foreground exile and related states as their topic. Sometimes these converge —author and topic—as in the passage from Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the author meets the exiled Cacciaguida, who warns Dante of his own coming 102 WLT AUTUMN 2020 exile from Florence. More often, exile is the focus but not the fate of the author. There is an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, for example, and Longfellow spells out the tragic fate of Acadie’s Evangeline, severed from her Gabriel: “Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort, / Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence.” Ample pages are devoted to tales of exile outside the Western canon. From ancient China, we get Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (trans. Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping): I’ve swallowed sobs of the lost dead...