Antoine Online
Alinea, Librairie Antoine book review #7 
December 21, 2009  
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Etel Adnan is a freestyler. Her poetic voice defies easy classification. Daughter of a Christian Greek mother and a Muslim Syrian father, she grew up speaking Greek and Turkish in a mainly Arabic-speaking society. She was also educated at French convent schools, and her early work was written in French whereas most of her later work has been first written in English. It is this variety of languages and cultures which lends Etal Adnan’s writings a unique and inimitable quality. Her material is drawn from the Lebanese civil war and its consequences: ‘Beirut sticks to me like hot wax, even in slumber,’ she writes in her novel ‘Of Cities and Women’. The versatile poet, essayist, artist, and novelist’s points of view are truly fascinating.

 

ÈÇÑíÓ ÚäÏãÇ ÊÊÚÑì Baris ‘Indama Tata‘Arra (Paris, When It's Naked) by Etel Adnan
Originally written in Arabic Etel Adnan’s Paris, When It's Naked is “part essay, part travel-tale, part imaginary travel into the multiple meanings of Paris.” It’s a book that delights all of our senses as it takes us through the city of Baudelaire on a highly personal journey in the words of a sensitive and remarkably intelligent writer.

 
Journey to Mount Tamalpais is an essay on Nature, Art and the relationship between the two. As all of Etel Adnan’s work it is original in its literary structure and sensitive content. It is as if Etel had gone on a pilgrimage and come back with a vision and a revelation.
 
Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan
Sitt Marie rose is the beloved teacher of deaf-mute children. Sitt Marie Rose is a young Christian woman living in Beirut who commits the unforgivable crime of falling for a Palestinian man and being sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. By doing so she has surrendered the protection of her tribe, she has become a threat to them and so four young men decide that she must die. She is kidnapped and brutally murdered in front of her students. A beautifully written work of a fiction that demonstrates the results of tribal thinking in modern countries and investigates the reasons that led to the horror of the civil war.
 
Seasons by Etel Adnan
Etel Adnan’s latest poetry book Seasons is a series of meditations on ourselves and the universe constantly seeking the mind’s encounter with the world. 'To think is not to contemplate, it's to witness.' As Etel follows the sun she takes us into the nature of time, knowledge, self, myth and history.
 
The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan
Translated from the French by the author these 59 catastrophic poems are an immersion into a chaotic world. It starts as a disjointed, dismembered text that slowly takes shape, first as the city of Beirut and then as the Palestinian refugee camp Tell Zaatar, acquiring historical reality. As in many of her works Etel Adnan combines Arabic calligraphy with modern language in order to produce this wise and sensitive poem. 
 

Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist by Lisa Suhair Majaj & Amal Amireh
If you wish to better understand the life and works of the magical Etel Adnan your best bet is the critical essay by Lisa Suhair Majaj and Amal Amireh. Long overdue this book is the first recognition in the English language of this eminently important contemporary Arab-American poet and artist. The first part of the book discusses Adnan’s writing and art through careful analysis. The second concentrates on her acclaimed Sitt Marie Rose detailing the responses and interpretations to the book. 

 

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