The Blue Light (The Arab List)

The Blue Light (The Arab List)

Hussein Barghouthi, Fady Joudah (Translated by)
$22.05
Publication Date: March 6th, 2023
Publisher:
Seagull Books
ISBN:
9781803090832
Pages:
168
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Description

The Blue Light is an autobiographical novel in chapters and vignettes that travels through memory, time, and language.

Hussein Bargouthi tells his story with Bari, a Turkish American Sufi, during Bargouthi’s years as a graduate student at the University of Washington in the late 1980s. The Blue Light has several beginnings and many returns—from Beirut’s traumatic sea to musings on color and identity, from Buddhist paths to Rajneesh disciples, from military rule to colonial insanity, from drug addiction to sacred rock. Written and lived between Arabic and English, this is a unique book whose depth is as clear as its surface. It will tempt you to dismiss it as it compels you to devour it for illumination. Merging memoir with fiction, and the hallowed with the profane, The Blue Light is a meditation on and liberation from madness—a brilliant, inimitable literary achievement.

About the Author

Hussein Barghouthi (1954–2002) was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright, and philosopher. Born in Palestine, he earned his MA and PhD in the US before going on to teach at Birzeit University and Al-Quds University. His best-known work, The Blue Light, is forthcoming in English translation in 2022 from Seagull Books.

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American physician, poet, and translator. He is the author of The Earth in the Attic.

Praise for The Blue Light (The Arab List)

"The Blue Light is philosophically capacious: Barghouthi explores spirituality and sociality, as well as knowledge, creativity, and writing."
— Full Stop

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