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Life after Baghdad is a follow-on volume to the author’s highly successful Baghdad, Yesterday (Ibis Editions, Jerusalem, 2007), which told of Sasson Somekh’s boyhood in the city of his birth and the circumstances under which his family decided to forsake Iraq, a land in which they were rooted for centuries, and move to Israel. It was highly acclaimed in the TLS and London Review of Books, and in the Israeli Ha’aretz, “It is hard to overstate the beauty, originality, lucidity, gentleness, wisdom and importance of Baghdad, Yesterday.”
… The present volume continues the story where the 2007 volume ends. Somekh, a noted student of modern Arabic culture, relates his life as a university professor and writer, taking the reader to Oxford, Princeton and Cairo, and introducing scholars and writers he befriended: S.D. Goitein, Mustafa Badawi and Haim Blanc, among others. He devotes a major section to Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) with whom he maintained a close comradeship for three decades, and from whom he received the following letter: “Both our peoples knew extraordinary partnership for many years in ancient times, during the Middle Ages, and in the modern era, with … quarrels being few and far between. Unfortunately, we have documented the disputes a hundred times more than the periods of friendship and cooperation …”
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Preface
Chapter 1: The Transit Camp
Chapter 2: Scouting About the Land
Chapter 3: The Tigris and the Jordan
Chapter 4: “The earth shall rise on new foundations”
Chapter 5: Lovers of Arabic in the First Hebrew
City
Chapter 6: Days with Alexander Penn
Chapter 7: An Interrupted Dialogue
Chapter 8: Father
Chapter 9: Higher Learning in Lower Tel Aviv
Chapter 10: Roman à clef: Three Years at the
Academy of the Hebrew Language
Chapter 11: A Family of My Own
Chapter 12: Mustafa
Chapter 13: Translating Literature
Chapter 14: Haim Blanc
Chapter 15: Saturday Evenings at the Goiteins
Chapter 16: Students and Colleagues
Chapter 17: 1988—Two Experiences
Chapter 18: A Modern Egyptian Sinbad
Chapter 19: Cairo—The Four Masters
Chapter 20: Cairo—End of the Century
Chapter 21: An Encounter with Taha Hussein’s
Granddaughter
Chapter 22: Naguib Mahfouz—Thirty Years of Friendship
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“Sasson Somekh is Israel’s literary
expert on modern Arabic literature and a fine writer in his
own right. Born in Baghdad and educated in Oxford, he became
a prominent literary figure and left-wing intellectual circles
in Tel Aviv. Baghdad, Yesterday (2007) recorded the fascinating
story of a precocious Jewish teenager living in an Arab country
before and just after the establishment of the State of Israel.
Life after Baghdad is the second volume of his autobiography
covering half a century of his illustrious career in Israel.
But Sasson Somekh is much more than an academic expert on the
literature of Israel’s neighbors. He is a living proof of the
possibility of a civilized dialogue and cultural cooperation
between Jews and Arabs.” Professor Avi Shalim, St. Antony’s
College, Oxford, author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the
Arab World
Reviewed by Benjamin Ivry in Forward
http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/163133/sasson-somekh-found-in-translation/
“Life After Baghdad, by contrast, deals
with Somekh’s first impressions of Israel, his years in the
Israeli Communist Party and in Arabic literary circles in
Israel (the two were closely intertwined), and his career
as a student and professor both in Israel and during stints
abroad in places such as Oxford and Princeton. His is certainly
a success story: Somekh was offered a position in the prestigiously
stuffy Academy of the Hebrew Language in the 1960s and held
the Halmos Chair in Arabic Literature at Tel Aviv University
from the early 1980s until his retirement in 2003. Somekh
gives us brief accounts of figures who influenced his life
and career, such as the brilliant, blind linguist Chaim Blanc,
the communist Hebrew poet Alexander Penn, and the eminent
historian, S. D. Goitein.
… Where Life After Baghdad is more than a merely chronological
continuation of the first book is in its focus on the author’s relationship with
Arabic language
and literature, and by extension with the Arabic world in Israel and beyond.
Baghdad, Yesterday sketched the origins, in interwar Baghdad, of his lifelong
love for Arabic literature. In the new book he informs us: “The primary goal
of this memoir is to reconstruct the ongoing attempts I have made to hold a discussion
– even a dialogue – with Arab intellectuals and writers: Egyptians, Iraqis, Palestinians,
and others, in the Middle East and elsewhere.”
… His focus in this regard is especially on Egypt – the last third
of the new book could be titled “Cairo, Yesterday”. Somekh reflects on his sojourns
in Egypt,
including his time as director of the Israeli cultural and academic center, which
was created in the 1980s and has maintained a beleaguered existence since. He
devotes a significant part of his book to his encounters with Egyptian writers
and intellectuals, above all the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Najib Mahfuz, who
was the subject of Somekh’s doctoral dissertation and the object of his devotion
as both writer and friend.” Jewish Review of Books
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Publication Details
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Paperback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-502-1 |
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Page Extent / Format: |
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170 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
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Release Date: |
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November 2011 |
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Illustrated: |
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Yes |
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Paperback Price: |
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£16.99 / $22.50 |
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