In eighteenth-century Palestine, on the shores of Galilee’s Lake Tiberias, visionary political and military leader Dahir al-Umar al-Zaydani undertakes a journey toward the greatest aim anyone could hope to achieve in his day: the establishment of an autonomous Arab state. To do so he must challenge the rule of the greatest power in the world at the time—the Ottoman Empire—while translating the ideals of human dignity, justice, and religious tolerance into concrete daily realities.
In this compelling story of love and loss, victory and defeat, loyalty and betrayal, award-winning poet and novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah, author of the Arabic Booker shortlisted Time of White Horses, once again brings Palestinian history alive with a set of characters and events both real and imagined to capture the essence of a rich and dramatic epoch in the turbulent annals of a land that has been fought over for millennia.
About the Author
Ibrahim Nasrallah was born to Palestinian parents in Jordan in 1954, and grew up in a refugee camp there. He has written fourteen collections of poetry and fourteen novels as well as works of literary criticism. He is also a painter and photographer. He is the author of Inside the Night (AUC Press, 2007) and Time of White Horses (AUC Press, 2012). Nancy Roberts is the translator of a number of Arabic novels including Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour (AUC Press, 2007), for which she received a commendation in the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Translation, and Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses.