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Second Person Singular
Second Person Singular | Sayed Kashua
4 posts | 3 read | 8 to read
"Part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery . . . Issues of nationalism, religion, and passing collide with quickly changing social and sexual mores." Boston Globe From one of the most important contemporary voices to emerge from the Middle East comes a gripping tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, which asks whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves, to shed our old skin and start anew. Second Person Singular follows two men, a successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist, whose lives intersect under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, a large house, a Mercedes, speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. In an effort to uphold his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he often makes weekly visits to a local bookstore to pick up popular novels. On one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. To his surprise, inside he finds a small white note, a love letter, in Arabic, in her handwriting. I waited for you, but you didn't come. I hope everything's all right. I wanted to thank you for last night. It was wonderful. Call me tomorrow? Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer slips into a blind rage over the presumed betrayal. He first considers murder, revenge, then divorce, but when the initial sting of humiliation and hurt dissipates, he decides to hunt for the book's previous ownera man named Yonatan, a man who is not easy to track down, whose identity is more complex than imagined, and whose life is more closely aligned with his own than expected. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer tears the string that holds all of their lives together. A Palestinian who writes in Hebrew, Sayed Kashua defies classification and breaks through cultural barriers. He communicates, with enormous emotional power and a keen sense of the absurd, the particular alienation and the psychic costs of people struggling to straddle two worlds. Second Person Singular is a deliciously complex psychological mystery and a searing dissection of the individuals that comprise a divided society.
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yoavshai
Second Person Singular | Sayed Kashua
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#BookCoverChallenge
Day 52.
Here I will note 365 books (or as many as I will have before I get tired) that have shaped my taste in literature. No explanations, no reviews. Just the cover of the book.
I do not challenge anyone. You are all welcome to take part.

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SqueakyChu
Second Person Singular | Sayed Kashua
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I just got this book from BookMooch. I‘ve read two other books by this Arab Israeli author and liked both of them very much. So excited to have received this book as it has been on my wishlist for a long, long time! I started reading it right away.

SqueakyChu Note: The picture here is not of the author. It‘s of the main character of the book 5y
SqueakyChu This is an excellent story. Don‘t miss it! 5y
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ReadingEnvy
Second Person Singular | Sayed Kashua
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Tonight at book club, one person did the reading in the original language. Pretty cool!

Notafraidofwords I got your card today. Thank you so much. Im excited to hear it. I hope I came out okay! 7y
Notafraidofwords @ReadingEnvy can't wait 😊 7y
76 likes3 comments
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ReadingEnvy
Second Person Singular | Sayed Kashua
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"Skin color is a little hard to shed, it's true. But the DNA of your social class is even harder to get rid of."

Notafraidofwords Ummm that's an odd sentence 🤔 7y
ReadingEnvy @Notafraidofwords yes. It's specifically alluding to the Jewish-Arab difference within Israel. I'm still thinking about it. 7y
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SqueakyChu I just started reading this book. I‘m already writing down quotes! 😃 5y
SqueakyChu Another book I‘d recommend about the Jewish-Arab difference in Israel is Scapegoat by Eli Amir. The book, though, is about Jews from Arab countries in Israel versus the Jews from other countries. (edited) 5y
ReadingEnvy @SqueakyChu ah thanks! 5y
SqueakyChu 👍 5y
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