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Outcast
Shimon Ballas Translated from the Hebrew by Ammiel Alcalay and Oz Shelach ISBN 0-87286-481-2 Paperback, 308 pp $13.95 | See a schedule of Ballas' upcoming readings and events |
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| “Tells readers more about Iraq than many commentaries being offered up these days” – Le Monde Outcast is narrated by Haroun Soussan, a Jewish convert to Islam. Soussan’s character is based on a historical figure, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussa, who converted to Islam in the 1930s and whose work ended up being used as propaganda during the era of Saddam Hussein. The narrator is a civil engineer and historian who’s just completed his life’s work, The Jews and History. The book opens with his getting an award from the President (Saddam Hussein) during the period of the Iran-Iraq War. The text we are reading, the novel, is his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, where he explores his own personal and political history, including his relationship with his daughter and his friends, among them a militant communist in political exile in Eastern Europe. Soussan’s narrative moves in and out of the present, the recent and more distant past, providing a unique and intimate chronicle of Iraq’s contemporary political history. His friends and comrades provide pathways into different aspects of Iraqi history, political resistance, repression, and allegiance.
Shimon Ballas was born in Baghdad in 1930 and immigrated to Israel in 1951. Before retirement, he taught Arab Literature there, and now spends part of the year in Paris, where he does most of his writing. |
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