On Ghassan Kanafani’s 79th Birthday
The great Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani was born on this day in 1936:
Kanafani was born in Akka to a prominent lawyer and started his studies at Les Frères, a French missionary school in Jaffa.
His life changed significantly when he was twelve: After his family’s displacement to Beirut and then Syria in 1948, he continued his studies in Syria’s public schools, where he got a UNRWA teaching certificate. He attended Damascus University, where he studied in the Arabic literature department until, according to a profile that ran in As-Safir, he was expelled for political reasons.
Initially, Kanafani worked as a teacher, leaving Damascus to work in Kuwait for five years as an Arts and PE teacher. Then, according to translator and scholar Roger Allen, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)’s George Habash helped persuade Kanafani to move to Beirut, where the author worked on the al-Horria newspaper, and later al-Moharrer and al-Anwar, before becoming the well-known editor-in-chief of the PFLP’s weekly newspaper, al-Hadaf.
Even before he left to teach in Kuwait, Kanafani was writing and publishing stories. According to Kuwaiti writer Mai al-Nakib, Kanafani’s “The Stolen Shirt” won the Kuwait Literary Prize in 1958, when Kanafani was just twenty-two. His Men in the Sun, one of his most popular and acclaimed works, was originally published in 1956, followed by All That’s Left to You, Return to Haifa, and a number of other important works, including four collections of short stories.
When Kanafani was assassinated in Beirut on July 8, 1972, he was just 36.
“While it is true that his life was brief,” Rasem al-Madhoon wrote in an essay translated by Nehad Khader, “it was also rich in the literature that he offered. A significant landmark of his literary, journalistic, and political journey was his preoccupation with the broader Palestinian national struggle and all of its demands; as was his persistence in penning short texts regularly. Ghassan’s friends remember his regular visits to Farouq Cafe in central Damascus.”
Kanafani’s texts are still read, staged, discussed, debated, and incorporated into new works, as in Susan Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin and the short film Qarar Mujaz, or A Brief Conclusion.
Online
“The Stolen Shirt,” trans. Michael Fares
“Jaffa: Land of Oranges,” trans. Mona Anis and Hala Halim
Excerpts from Return to Haifa, trans. Barbara Harlow and Karen E. Riley
“Letter from Gaza,” translator not listed.
Books in translation
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories, translated by Kilpatrick
Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, translated by Harlow and Riley
All That’s Left to You, translated by May Jayyusi and Jeremy Reed
About Kanafani:
“Ghassan Kanafani: The Symbol of the Palestinian Tragedy,” by Rasem al-Madhoon, trans. Khader
“Remembering Ghassan Kanafani,” by Elias Khoury, trans. Maia Tabet
“Returning to Haifa,” Arab Arts Blog
On Ghassan Kanafani’s 79th Birthday | band annie's Weblog
April 9, 2015 @ 7:46 am
[…] BY MLYNXQUALEY on APRIL 9, 2015 • ( 0 ) […]
April 9, 2015 @ 9:29 am
Thank you for all the information! It is very nice to
get an idea about Arabic literature.
However, it would be highly appreciated if
You could include the original titles in Arabic
when discussing translations of works.
Best regards
Ingjerd Yousef
April 9, 2015 @ 1:45 pm
In this case, you can easily find his bibliography here, in English and transliterated Arabic:
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17866/ghassan-kanafani_a-profile-from-the-archives
April 9, 2015 @ 8:14 pm
I have had GREAT success using his short stories in my classroom, especially “The Slope” both my high school English students and Creative Writing students adored that story, and I had Palestine’s Children as one of the reading and project choices in a month unit in a Senior World Literature class. Teachers wanting more info on this can contact me at my email adress.
April 9, 2015 @ 8:36 pm
Thanks Ernie. 🙂
May 10, 2015 @ 3:37 pm
Thanks for this article that made me re-read his Men in the Sun. My recent review http://www.mytwostotinki.com/?p=1458