The Children of the Ghetto: I

Book excerpt: Lit by the sublime beauty and tragedy of classical Arabic poetry, a Palestinian falafel seller in New York sets out to shape fragments of his family history Weaving history, memory, and poetry, this unforgettable novel—and the 1st book in a trilogy—provides a sprawling memorial to the Nakba and the strangled lives left in its wake. Long exiled in New York, Palestinian ex-pat Adam Dannoun thought he knew himself. But an encounter with Blind Mahmoud, a father figure from his childhood, changes everything. It is when Adam encounters his former teacher that Adam discovers the story he must tell. Ma’moun’s testimony brings Adam back to the first years of his life in the ghetto of Lydia, in Palestine, where his family endured thirst, hunger, and terror in the aftermath of unspeakable horror. With unmatched literary craft and empathy, Khoury peels away layers of lost stories and repressed memories to unveil Adam’s story. Oscillating between two narrators—the self-reflexive "Elias Khoury" and Adam himself—Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam engages real (and invented) scholarly texts, Khoury’s own work, and Adam’s lost notebooks in an intertextual account of a life shadowed by atrocity.