The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist Emile Habiby
Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group, Incorporated

The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, by Emile Habiby English translation, 1974, 192 pp. Passage to Dusk by Rashid al-Daif. In The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist by Emile Habiby, a Palestinian illegally gains re-entry into Israel after the deportation of Palestinian refugees in 1948. First, this book introduced me to one of my favorite descriptors: pessoptimist. Arabic literature does not feature many novels, and of those, perhaps only this one is meant as a comedy. In this week's issue, Claudia Roth Pierpont considers the Arabic novel, a form still relatively young in the region and steadily being translated and disseminated around the world. July 15, 2008 in Books | Tags: Books, Israel, Palestine. Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani. Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. Abu Pessoptimist: This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. On Monday, February 7th we gathered to discuss The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist (Al-Waka'i al gharieba fi ikhtifa Said Abul Nahs al-Mutasha'il) by Emile Habiby.