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The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist
''The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist'' ( ar, الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل) is a 1974 satirical fiction book by Emile Habibi. The novel's name comes from merging the Arabic words for pessimist (al-mutasha'im المتشائم) and optimist (al-mutafa'il المتفائل), to describe the narrator Saeed's unique way of viewing the world. Saeed, the novel's narrator, frequently recounts tragic events related to his family and the plight of Palestinians, but adds in comic flourishes to show his "optimistic" side. Narrative and Plot Habibi used a comic mode to mitigate the intensity of his world in Israel and to make the story easier for readers to understand. This would have been more difficult had he used a straightforward historical narrative. Habiby showed his resistance against oppressive Israeli policies by using Arabic literary expressions and traditions. The story begins with a Palestinian man named Saeed, w ...
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Emile Habibi
Emile Shukri Habibi ( ar, إميل حبيبي, he, אמיל חביבי, 28 January 1922 – 2 May 1996) was a Palestinian-Israeli"All Past and Present MKs"
Knesset website
writer of Arabic literature and a politician who served as a member of the for the communist parties Maki and Rakah.


Biography

Habibi was born in

Trevor LeGassick
Trevor LeGassick (August 19, 1934June 21, 2022) was a noted Western scholar and translator in the field of Arabic literature. He obtained a BA in Arabic from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1958 and completed a PhD, also from SOAS, in 1960. After stints in Wisconsin and Indiana, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1966, where he would teach for fifty-two years. He was promoted to full professor in 1979. LeGassick published three books and numerous articles on contemporary Arabic culture and literature. He was also noted as a translator of Arabic novels, short stories and plays, covering a wide range of modern writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, Halim Barakat, Yusuf Idris and Emile Habiby. His 1975 translation of Mahfouz's novel ''Midaq Alley'' was one of the first works to introduce English speakers to the writings of the eventual Nobel Prize winner. He retired as Emeritus Professor at the University of Michigan on May 31, 2022 and passed away on June 2 ...
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Salma Jayyusi
Salma Khadra Jayyusi ( ar, سلمى الخضراء الجيوسي; born 1926 or 1927) is a Palestinian poet, writer, translator and anthologist. She is the founder and director of the Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), which aims to provide translation of Arabic literature into English. Life Salma Khadra Jayyusi was born in Safed to a Palestinian father, the Arab nationalist Subhi al-Khadra, and a Lebanese mother. Attending secondary school in Jerusalem, she studied Arabic and English literature at the American University of Beirut. She married a Jordanian diplomat, with whom she travelled and raised three children.Personality of the Month: Salma Khadra Jayyusi
''This Week in Palestine'', Issue No. 114, October 2007. Accessed 11 September 2012.
In 1960, she published h ...
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Arabic Language
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston, 2011. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arabs, Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece. Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as First language, mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is ...
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Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque (literary), burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satir ...
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Fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games. Definition Typically, the fictionality of a work is publicly marketed and so the audience expects the work to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood to not fully adhere to the real world, the themes a ...
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1948 Arab–Israeli War
The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had been issued earlier that day, and a military coalition of Arab states entered the territory of British Palestine in the morning of 15 May. The day after the 29 November 1947 adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine – which planned to divide Palestine into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and the Special International Regime encompassing the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem – an ambush of two buses carrying Jews took place in an incident regarded as the first in the civil war which broke out after the UN decision. The violence had certain continuities with the past, the Fajja bus attack being a direct response to a Lehi massacre on 19 November of five members of an Arab family, suspected of being British infor ...
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Salma Khadra Jayyusi
Salma Khadra Jayyusi ( ar, سلمى الخضراء الجيوسي; born 1926 or 1927) is a Palestinian poet, writer, translator and anthologist. She is the founder and director of the Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), which aims to provide translation of Arabic literature into English. Life Salma Khadra Jayyusi was born in Safed to a Palestinian father, the Arab nationalist Subhi al-Khadra, and a Lebanese mother. Attending secondary school in Jerusalem, she studied Arabic and English literature at the American University of Beirut. She married a Jordanian diplomat, with whom she travelled and raised three children.Personality of the Month: Salma Khadra Jayyusi
''This Week in Palestine'', Issue No. 114, October 2007. Accessed 11 September 2012.
In 1960, she published h ...
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1974 Books
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; following Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's resignation in response to high Israeli casualties, she was succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin. In Europe, the invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkish troops initiated the Cyprus dispute, the Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal, and Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt resigned following an espionage scandal surrounding his secretary Günter Guillaume. In sports, the year was primarily dominated by the FIFA World Cup in West Germany, in which the German national team won the championship title, as well as The Rumble in the Jungle, a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire. Events January–February * January 26 – Bülent Ecevit of CHP ...
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Satirical Books
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to question. Satire is found in many artisti ...
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Israeli Novels
Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (born 1984), Israeli basketball player See also * Israelites, the ancient people of the Land of Israel * List of Israelis Israelis ( he, ישראלים ''Yiśraʾelim'') are the citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel, a multiethnic state populated by people of different ethnic backgrounds. The largest ethnic groups in Israel are Jews (75%), foll ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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