Dreaming of Palestine

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <yoshie@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

*****   Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 December 2002
Issue No. 617

Not kid stuff

A book by a 15-year-old girl on Palestine is causing a
sharp outcry by anti-Semitism activists in France. Amina
Elbendary reports

Intellectual and journalistic circles in France -- and to
an extent in Germany -- have been up in arms protesting the
publication of 15-year-old Randa Ghazy's book Rêver La
Palestine [Dreaming of Palestine]. The book, aimed at young
adults, deals with the frustrations and anger of young
Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in
the West Bank and Gaza.

The original Italian text, Sognando Palestina, was
published in Italy last March, where Ghazy lives with her
Egyptian parents, Ibrahim Ghazy and Sanaa Mohamed, and her
sister and brother. The saga began when Ghazy wrote a short
story for a competition. Upon winning first prize, she was
encouraged by an Italian publishing house to develop her
ideas into a novella. The book did not cause much protest
in Italy where it has sold some 13,000 copies so far and is
on its fifth reprint. It has already been translated to
French, German and Norwegian. Officials at the Egyptian
publishing house Dar Al-Shorouk confirmed to Al-Ahram
Weekly that they have bought the Arabic rights for the book
and will be publishing an Arabic translation shortly --
hopefully in time for the Cairo International Book Fair
next month.

Yet last week Jewish and Zionist lobbies and pressure
groups in France and Germany protested the publication of
the French translation of the book by the French publishers
Editions Flammarion as part of a series for adolescents.
The organisations have called on the French government to
order the withdrawal of the novel from circulation.
Opponents argue that the novella, in which one of the
characters blows himself up in the course of killing five
Israeli soldiers, promotes anti-Semitism and hate and
glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers who attack Israelis.
They also complain that the language in the 207-page volume
is inflammatory and reject its depiction of Israeli
soldiers defiling mosques and raping Arab women.

Speaking (in Arabic) to Al-Ahram Weekly from her home near
Milan, Randa Ghazy explained that her detractors had seized
upon certain paragraphs in the book and read them out of
context. "The novel talks about youth living in Palestine,
but it's not true that it promotes violence. But there [in
France] they take a single word from the book and say it
encourages young people to kill themselves and so on. They
take a word out of an entire book."

As Ghazy explains, Sognando Palestina "talks about young
people living in Palestine and what happens there. It shows
for example how they can't leave their homes [because of
curfews] to go to work and live [a normal life]. Everyone
in the story loses family members; for example, the
character Ibrahim loses his father, Nidal, and his mother
and sister. Everyone has a story of someone in their family
having died in the war. Two or three of the characters join
the resistance movement. And most of the friends die in the
novel." Only Ibrahim, the main protagonist, remains alive
at the end.

Although she has spent her entire life in Italy, Ghazy is
well-informed about the Palestinian cause owing to her
parents' efforts to teach her about the issue. "My father
used to talk to me about the 1973 War and my mother also
talked to me about the Arab-Israeli conflict, which
encouraged me to study Palestine to learn exactly what
happened there," she explained. Watching on TV footage of
the atrocities committed against the Palestinians during
the ongoing Intifada, including the brutal murder of
Mohamed Al-Dorra, prompted her to learn more about the
Palestinian question. "After I wrote the book I got to know
many Palestinians and they all told me that it tells about
things that actually happen in Palestine; they've lived
there and know what it's like," she added....

[The full article is available at
<http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/617/re11.htm>.]
  *****

Frank Bruni, "Dreaming of Palestine, Teenager Writes a
Novel," _New York Times_ 28 December 2002,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/28/international/middleeast/28FPRO.html>.

"Intervista a Randa Ghazy Scrittrice: 'Gli europei
indifferenti davanti al dramma della Palestina,'"
<http://www2.varesenews.it/articoli/2002/aprile/sud/4-4randa.htm>.

*****   Titolo: Sognando Palestina
Autore: Ghazy Randa
Prezzo
Sconto 20%
EURO 7,20 (Prezzo di copertina EURO 9,00 Risparmio EURO
1,80)
Dati: 216 p.
Anno: 2002
Editore: Fabbri
Collana: Contrasti

<http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1107&c=GHXXUAZO4YBAB>
  *****

*****   Rêver la Palestine
de Randa Ghazi, Anna Buresi (Traduction)

Notre prix :  EUR 10,00  /  65,60 FF
Disponibilité : 3 à 4 jours
Livraison gratuite à partir de 20 euros (131 FF) d'achats
(lire nos conditions)
Broché - 206 pages (4 novembre 2002)
Flammarion; (.) ; ISBN : 2081616262

<http://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/2081616262/qid%3D1041143225/171-4756643-9718625>
  *****
---
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