This Week in Palestine - Book Review
Issue no. 7 - April 1999
Al Lake Beyond the Wind
Yehya Yakhlof
First published in Arabic in 1991 by
Dar al Aadab, Beirut
English Edition: 1999, Interlink
publishing house, USA
214 pages
Translated from Arabic by Mayy Jayyousi and Christopher
Tingley. Palestinian novels so far have run short of reflecting the catastrophe
that befell the Palestinian people 50 years ago. While the memory of the
Nakba remained 
dominant
on the poetic and political scene, it was not dealt with sufficiently in
the novel form. In this sense, A Lake Beyond the Wind is one of the few
Palestinian novels which tried to handle this issue and is part of a trilogy
which traces the political and social history of the Palestinians in novel
form since their forced exodus in 1948 until the mid 90s.
In this first novel of the trilogy, the writer
attempts to reflect on the details of the daily life of the residents of
Samakh village, the author's home town, and their feelings on the eve of
the catastrohpe. The novel also looks into the various forms of resistance
used by the residents and follows their fate as it is formulated by major
world events.
The novel combines the autobiographical technique
and the re-writing of history in a way that allows the readers to understand
the events through a mixture of fiction and historical facts.
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