Description
Description
In this stunning portrait of Palestinian life before the Nakba, a young man gains renown as a magician of a revolutionary sort--meanwhile evading the British colonialist forces who seek to destroy him and the resistance he represents. A reporter posted to Lebanon in the early 1980s, covering the Israeli invasion of the time, encounters Miss Alice, an English missionary who is nearing the end of a long life in the region. With memories that go back to World War I and the start of the British Mandate in Palestine, she unfolds the strangely puzzling story of one of her students, Tareq, a talented and charismatic youth who, on leaving school, took up the unlikely calling of a traveling magician. Moving from village to village, from country to city, Tareq observes the growing discontent with the colonial authorities that will erupt in a full-scale rebellion in 1936. He observes; perhaps he contributes. Among the people, he has come to be known as "the lord," while his comings and goings have also attracted the attention of Challis, the ruthless British police chief. A manhunt begins. The Lord re-creates the extraordinary richness and vivacity of Palestinian life before the Nakba, offering a view, at once panoramic and intimate, of Palestinian society and colonial occupation. A clear-eyed examination of a chapter of British colonial history that laid the groundwork for conflicts that continue to rack the Middle East, The Lord remains as timely and telling now as ever.
About the Author
About the Author
Soraya Antonius (1932-2017) was born in Jerusalem, then the capital of Palestine, the only child of the author and diplomat George Antonius and the socialite Katy Nimr. After attending Cheltenham Ladies' College and the Slade School of Fine Art in England, she lived for many years in Beirut, Lebanon, where she worked as a journalist, editor, publisher, and curator. A founding member of the Fifth of June Society, organized to educate journalists and the general public about Palestine, she also wrote and produced a documentary film about the Palestinian Revolution, Resistance, Why? She was the author of two novels, The Lord and Where the Jinn Consult. Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer of fiction who lives in London. Her first novel, Out of It, which takes place in London, Gaza, and the Gulf, was published in 2011 and was named one of The Guardian's Best Books of the Year by Marina Warner. She is also the author of many short stories, a radio play produced by the BBC, and the editor of We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
"An admirable, elegant, and restrained first novel." --The Times Literary Supplement "Antonius creates vivid characters and mercilessly skewers British imperial life. But her greatest strength is lush descriptive prose. On every page there are jeweled sentences . . . [The Lord] remains a noteworthy literary achievement for its ability to re-create the world of Palestine on the eve of its destruction as it might have appeared to people living through it." --Elliott Colla, The Washington Post "The Lord tunnels into the lost worlds of Palestine before Israel, not as counterfactual or nostalgia. It rebuilds those worlds as text, through breathtaking descriptions . . . Antonius's characters are as hopeless as they are familiar to today's readers. But her settings do something more. They root into the soil. They expose ancient forms of coexistence. They reclaim the possibility of beauty, translatable in all directions." --Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, 4Columns "The Lord combines history, political analysis, spycraft and misguided love affairs, shrouding all these elements in le Carré-like grey. Antonius is a sophisticated writer and expects us to keep up with her . . . Antonius's narrator writes from a Lebanon reeling from the Sabra and Shatila massacre. With this reissue, the book's resonance gains another dimension." --Chris Power, The Observer
"Soraya Antonius has an excellent ear for the gulf that separate two cultures, the rulers and the ruled. But the greatest delight of her book is her vivid evocation of great cities like Jerusalem and Jaffa, glories of a vanished Palestine, tragically doomed amid its olive groves." --The Standard "Bitterly powerful." --New Statesman "Antonius is a splendid writer. . . . [The Lord is] a sensitive and evocative novel." --Cosmopolitan "Through detailed descriptions of smells, colours, tastes and noises of the impoverished Arab villages, mixed with the noise of the clinking cocktail glasses of the British civil servants in Jerusalem, the writer conjures up a picture of Mandatory Palestine . . . [a] fascinating novel." --The Jewish Chronicle "Passionate, intimately informed . . . the book triumphantly evokes its time and place, and depicts with searing accuracy the tragic collision of age-old custom with modern bureaucracy." --Publishers Weekly "A most remarkable, original, and compelling book." --Sybille Bedford "A moving and heartfelt account of one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century." --John Julius Norwich
"Soraya Antonius has an excellent ear for the gulf that separate two cultures, the rulers and the ruled. But the greatest delight of her book is her vivid evocation of great cities like Jerusalem and Jaffa, glories of a vanished Palestine, tragically doomed amid its olive groves." --The Standard "Bitterly powerful." --New Statesman "Antonius is a splendid writer. . . . [The Lord is] a sensitive and evocative novel." --Cosmopolitan "Through detailed descriptions of smells, colours, tastes and noises of the impoverished Arab villages, mixed with the noise of the clinking cocktail glasses of the British civil servants in Jerusalem, the writer conjures up a picture of Mandatory Palestine . . . [a] fascinating novel." --The Jewish Chronicle "Passionate, intimately informed . . . the book triumphantly evokes its time and place, and depicts with searing accuracy the tragic collision of age-old custom with modern bureaucracy." --Publishers Weekly "A most remarkable, original, and compelling book." --Sybille Bedford "A moving and heartfelt account of one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century." --John Julius Norwich
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
New York Review of Books
Pub date:
2025-12-02
Length:
248 pages
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