A Lake Beyond the Wind

by Yahya Yakhlif and يحيى يخلف

Book Overview

The year is 1948; the place, Samakh, a small town on Lake Tiberias, north of Jerusalem. People in Samakh are waiting -- for what, exactly, they do not yet know. The whistle of the Haifa-Deraa train doesn't sound anymore. Abd al-Karim, the shopkeeper, no longer goes into the city to buy new stock. "You townspeople, " says Haj Mahmoud, leader of the fighters in the 1936 rebellion, "had better start digging trenches. There are dark days ahead." A Lake...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566563011
• ISBN13: 9781566563017
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Interlink Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The catastrophe . . .

This fine and revealing novel provides a view of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Set mostly in a town on the south shore of the Sea of Galilee on the border with Jordan, it introduces readers to a cast of characters ranging from peasants to business owners to landed property owners, all of whom in the closing chapters of the novel are driven from their homes by advancing Jewish armies. The novel captures long established social relationships and the rhythms of daily life, weather, wildlife, landscapes, so that the reader is touched by the loss of all that has been experienced as "home" by these people we have come to know. It is a recollection of a time and place tinged with nostalgia. Several story lines are woven together, so that different characters take turns at center stage. A boy buys a bullet-proof vest from a departing British soldier, which then passes through several hands as the novel progresses. A widower with a small estate lives with a small household staff and spends a harrowing night in a disabled car being driven by another man, a character who later in the novel finds an abandoned baby. A volunteer soldier from Baghdad comes to Palestine to fight alongside the Palestinians and befriends another young soldier from Aleppo, who has fallen in love with a young woman he has met by chance in Damascus. Most moving are the accounts of the battles and descriptions of the flood of refugees. The tone of loss and defeat at the end of the novel is in keeping with how this period of Palestinian history is remembered - as a catastrophe. Though sometimes a little flat, the translation from Arabic is serviceable, and it's easy to become absorbed into the daily lives of the characters. The closing chapters are gripping.

Lyrical, poetic story

This novel is an exquisite and poignant story about Palestinian society just before and during the displacements of 1948. Its literary strengths make the book worthwhile reading for anyone -- and not only for those who have a particular interest in the region, its people, and history.

takes you where history tells the story

This novel has a significant importance because of the period and the characters it take you to. For many westerns, the mystery of the Palestinian problem still unclear and unsolved . Sometimes one wonders whither the Palestinian- israeli problem is caused by human or by the devine power.. Take a look at this interesting novel. It will make you understand the 1948 condition of the war,the people, the revolution and the reaction of the new emerging palestinians.