Shaw Dallal : Scattered Like Seeds

The latest addition to my website is Shaw Dallal‘s Scattered Like Seeds. Dallal was a Palestinian who emigrated to the United States via Kuwait, where he had a successful career as a lawyer. This is an autobiographical novel and Dallal is here Thafer Ayoub Allam. We follow his story from a childhood encounter with occupying British soldiers in Palestine to his appointment as chief legal counsel for the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries in Kuwait. This is the most interesting part as, now he is back in Arab territory, he starts to modify his views on the United States, recognising that his adopted country has nor been fair either to Palestine or the Arab countries as a whole, though he maintains that, at least in part, this because of ignorance rather than malice. We also see the various Arab countries and their views of Israel, the US, the USSR and, more interestingly, one another. This novel certainly gives a different perspective from the more common one of the oppressed Palestinians under brutal Ottoman/Brititish/Jewish rule.

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