Novel
Men in the Sun
رجال في الشمس
Ghassan Kanafani · 1963
Synopsis
Three Palestinian refugees from three generations, old Abu Qais who thinks of his olive trees, Assaad, and Marwan, sixteen, who wanted to be a doctor, try to cross from Iraq into Kuwait to find work there. Humiliated by a smuggler in Basra, they come to an agreement with Abu Khaizuran, a disillusioned Palestinian driver, a veteran of 1948. To get through the desert checkpoints, they have to hide in the empty tank of his lorry, under the midday sun.
Context
It is Kanafani's first novel, published in Beirut. The narrative advances through interior monologues and images, in the manner of a screenplay; the driver there represents an impotent leadership that seeks only its own interest. The Egyptian Tewfik Saleh adapted it for the cinema for the General Organisation for Cinema in Damascus in 1972, and the film received the Golden Tanit at Carthage in 1973. Michel Seurat translated it into French in 1977.
Who it is for
A short novel, tautly constructed, that can be read in one sitting; available in French from Sindbad.
Prizes and reception
The author's first novel, it became a reference text of Palestinian literature of exile.