A jewish family's forgotten history
Klappentext:There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. Arabness used to be a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. Today, in the age of the Likud and ISIS, Oscar's grandson, the Jewish Arab journalist Massoud Hayoun whom Oscar raised in Los Angeles, finds his voice by telling his family's story. To reclaim a wordly, nuanced Arab identity is, for Hayoun, part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. It is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world, an age that is now nearly gone.
When We Were Arabs showcases Hayoun's gorgeous prose, bringing the worlds of his grandparents alive and vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab, what makes a Jew, and how we draw the lines over which we do battle.
Über die Autorin / über den Autor:Massoud Hayoun is a journalist based in Los Angeles. He has reported for Al Jazeera English, Pacific Standard, Anthony Boudain's Parts Unknown online, The Atlantic, Agence France-Presse, and the South China Morning Post. He speaks and works in five languages and won a 2015 EPPY Award.
Preis: CHF 35.50
