21. Review: Khalifeh: The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant
- Author:
- Hala Halim
- Publication Date:
- 06-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Palestine Studies
- Institution:
- Institute for Palestine Studies
- Abstract:
- In awarding Sahar Khalifeh's Sura wa ayquna wa 'ahdun qadim (2002) the American University in Cairo's 2006 Naguib Mahfouz Medal, the jury aptly lauded this "narrative of loss par excellence . . . [as] simultaneously historiciz[ing] for the current Palestinian struggle while summoning a whole array of the symbolic." From its very title, The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant divulges its biblical symbolism, which will be made to bear here further layers of political allusion. Ostensibly the story of a doomed love and the desperate pursuit of its traces decades later, this is a novel of "national allegory," as in Fredric Jameson's formulation.
- Topic:
- War
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Palestine, and Jerusalem