This book is a history of its author's youth and the memoir of a family and a fabled region - Galilee... A beautifully impressive piece of prose. -William H. Gass, New York Times Book Review Arabesques is a classic of the exploration of identity.... A Palestinian master of Hebrew, living at the seam between Jews and Arabs, between the ancient and the modern, between loyalties and appetites, Shammas has written beautifully about his search for design. He transforms fact into fantasy without changing a thing. -Leon Wieseltier Arabesques really brings, as novels were once supposed to bring, 'news' from elsewhere.... This book has already added something notable to Israeli literature. -Irving Howe, New York Review of Books If Hebrew literature is at all destined to have its Conrads, Nabokovs, Becketts and lonescos, it could not have hoped for a more auspicious beginning. -Muhammed Siddiq, Los Angeles Times Book Review Intricately conceived and beautifully written.... A crisp, luminous, and nervy mixture of fantasy and autobiography...[and] an elegant example of postmodern baroque. -John Updike, The New Yorker
