al-Qundus : riwāyah

Author

Muḥammad Ḥasan ʻAlwān

Call Number

• ARABIC FICTION ALWA (OSH)

Edition

al-Ṭabʻah al-Khāmisah.

Languages

In Arabic.

Publication Information

Beirut : Dār al-Sāqī, 2013.

Physical Description

319 pages ; 21 cm

Summary

A man in his mid forties, Ghaleb sits on the side of a river in Oregon, pretending to fish as he thinks back on the life he just left in Saudi Arabia. He observes a friendly beaver. Beavers remind Ghaleb of his family. With their big wet eyes, like those of his mother, the greedy hands of his half brother. They stick to each other and build dams, exactly like members of his family are stuck together? leaving him out of the flock. Ghaleb is not a beaver. Beaver is the vivid portrait of a recently enriched family in Riyadh, and a very lucid look on family in general: misunderstandings, disappointments, deceptions, money, relations of power, resentment and petty fights. Through Ghaleb?s recent exile and his memories, the reader gets a substantial grasp of the Saudi society, Even more powerful, the narrator?s extremely sharp and honest assessments.