Sayed Kashua

Anna Bernard (King's College London)

Ed. by Ziad Elmarsafy, King's College London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 6.1.1: Israeli and Palestinian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Anna Bernard (King's College London), Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University), Anastasia Valassopoulos (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 1975
Activity c. 2002-c.

Places

Born in Israel
Active in Israel

Resources

Kashua's Works

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In Sayed Kashua’s most recent novel,

Second Person Singular

(

Guf sheni yachid,

2010), the first-person narrator Amir, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, acquires an identity card belonging to an Israeli Jew. The owner of the card is a young man Amir’s own age who is in a vegetative state after a suicide attempt. Amir uses the ID card to apply for admission to Bezalel, Israel’s national art academy, where he begins a new life: “I was Yonatan Forschmidt: Israeli, white, Ashkenazi, a consumer of Western culture. I was not Sephardic and I was not the token Arab” (283; page numbers refer to the published English translations of the Hebrew texts). As Yonatan, Amir is privy to the conversations that the Jewish students have amongst themselves about Arabs:

The only thing they really

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1783 words

Citation: Bernard, Anna. "Sayed Kashua". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 August 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13077, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Sayed Kashua

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