Turki Al-Hamad

Hisham is a Saudi Arabia teen chafing with the current political and social mores in this psychological and historical novel. While fundamentally a coming of age novel, much of the book takes place in Hisham's mind and much of the plot stays focused on his struggles against the politics of the day. Hisham does not so much mature as he is buffeted by the hit-or-miss effectiveness of his high school regime, other students, secret political cells, the police, his parents, and his girlfriend. The author does a passable job of weaving in various current Islamic schools of thought about how to handle Israel and the West without it being too obvious. Nevertheless there is little character development but a lot of visibility and revelation about what it really means to grow up in Saudia Arabia and partake in seemingly forbidden engagement with others of various politics, gender, and generations.… (mer)

Adama is set int he late 1960s, a time of upheaval in the Arab world. The 'Setback' - the loss of the 1967 war to Israel - had occurred, Nasser - the father of Arab nationalism - was being forced into compromise, and the Middle East was undergoing transition as many countries (e.g. Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt) were replacing their monarchies with leftist Arab nationalist governments. Saudi Arabia was cracking down on dissidents, fearful of the same thing happening to it. Against this background, Hisham, a young Saudi boy, is just entering into political awareness. His transition to young adulthood is accompanied by growing political awareness and Marxist leanings. His politics do not go unnoticed, and he becomes involved with a dissident movement for left-wing democracy. He must therefore balance the usual pains of growing up (exams, girls) with a second, secret existence of clandestine meetings and political disillusionment.
I enjoyed Adama, and learnt a lot about the 1960s politics of the middle east from it. There is a fair bit of discussion of Nasser and Baathist movements which, with the help of the interent, made a lot of things make sense that I hadn't previously understood about that region's recent history. However, the book's strength is also its weakness. Is it a didactic political book with a coming of age story thrown in, or is it a coming of age story with a political aspect? Poltical meetings and discussion are dispersed with half-hearted love stories and sticky adolescent fumblings, and the whole lot sits together very uneasily. I think the tone is too intellectual to be a realistic coming of age story of a teenage boy, and so the narrative part (i.e. what most people look to in a novel) becomes messy and, bizzarely, irrelevant. In addition the writing and/or translation is clunky in the extreme, with dialogue in particular being far too didactic to be realistic. Adama is the first of a trilogy, and there was just about enough there to tempt me back for more, but not in a hurry. Interesting, thought provoking, but ultimately, not a great piece of writing.… (mer)