Available again, Arabesques is a classic, complex novel of identity, memory, and history in the Middle East and points beyond-including Iowa and New York City. Anton Shammas, the first Arab to write a novel in Hebrew, has given us a riveting look at a people we hear too little about: Palestinian Christians. Arabesques was chosen as one of the best books of 1988 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review.
"Arabesques is a classic of the exploration of identity. . . . A Palestinian master of Hebrew, living at the seam between Jews and Arabs, between the ancient and the modern, between loyalties and appetites, Shammas has written beautifully about his search for design. He transforms fact into fantasy without changing a thing."-Leon Wieseltier