My First and Only Love, Khalifeh Sahar

After many decades of restless exile, Nadal returns to her family home in Nablus, where she had lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba that scattered her family across the globe. She was a young girl when the popular resistance began and, through the bloodshed and bitter struggle, Nidal fell in love with Rabie, a freedom fighter. He was her first and only real love--him and all that he represented: Palestine in its youth and spring, the resistance fighters in the hills, the nation as embodied in her family home and in the land.

Years later, Nidal and Rabie meet, and he encourages her to read her uncle Amins memoirs. She immerses herself in the details of her family and national past and discovers that her absent mother had been nurse and lover to Palestinian leader Abdel-Qader al-Husseini.

Set in the final days of the British Mandate, Sahar Khalifehs spins an epic tale filled with emotional urgency and political immediacy.

Khalifeh is simply the greatest Palestinian novelist and one of the worlds greatest historical novelists, ranking with Naguib Mahfouz, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.--Jim Holstun, Professor of English, University at Buffalo

Khalifeh effectively paints a crazy world where individuals seek to lead normal lives under nightmarish conditions . . . .Highly recommended. --Library Journal

In Khalifehs book, Palestinian Christians and Muslims, Jewish immigrants, and British colonial leaders are all treated with equal sympathy-- Womens Review of Books

Incisively explores individual lives--particularly womens lives--in the years just before 1948. The book is an unusual and compelling tapestry of stories.--Marcia Lynx Qualey, Arabic Literature

The author invokes a sacred heritage that remains at once vital and powerful.--Dr. Abdel Moneim Tallima

Sahar Khalifeh is the Virginia Woolf of Palestinian literature.-- B rsenblatt