My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century
Adina Hoffman, . . Yale Univ., $27.50 (464pp) ISBN 978-0-300-14150-4
That his happiness bears a strong relationship to dispossession and exile makes Israeli Arab poet Taha Muhamad Ali, subject of this luminous biography, an iconic voice of the Palestinian consciousness. The 17-year-old Taha and his family lost their home when the Israeli army captured and demolished their village, Saffuriyya, in 1948. After a lifetime spent running a souvenir shop in Nazareth, he has recently won international acclaim for his poetry. Intersecting his perceptions with Hoffman’s own account of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (which sometimes favors the Palestinians), Israeli-American essayist Hoffman (
Reviewed on: 01/26/2009
Genre: Nonfiction
Paperback - 464 pages - 978-0-300-16427-5