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Literature and War: Conversations With Israeli and Palestinian Writers by Runo Isaksen
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by Leigh Anne Vrabel
Despite the technorati's persistent claims that we'll be paperless and bookless before the century is out, literature marches on, telling the story of the human condition in all of its messy glory. Those who would wrap it up neatly in a canon and tuck it away on a high shelf are sadly mistaken about the universal purpose of literature: to tell the story of human beings, and reveal something of their souls in the execution of their imaginations. Literature complicates our tendency to sort human beings into neat categories and assume that we know them; it takes us beyond the headlines into the highest heights and most shameful depths of what it means to be alive.
One delightful side effect of such creative grappling with life's thornier questions is that those people not content with sixty-second news bites or cursory CNN reportage still have an ever-growing pile of texts with which to wrestle. A good place to start this year would be with the 2009 translation of Runo Isaksen's Literature and War: Conversations with Israeli and Palestinian Writers. Not content merely to insert himself into the middle of one of the world's most heated and painful global issues, Isaksen ups the ante by framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the larger context of what literature is and what it can achieve. The resulting text, while deceptively slim, functions like a surprise snowball ambush: after the initial shock of the text wears off, the reader finds him/herself roused to thought and action by the pointed, passionate voices of the Palestinian and Israeli writers Isaksen has interviewed.
Researched and written between 2002 and 2003, Isaksen's project grew out of a sincere desire to understand a context that left him, as a Norwegian peace activist, quite frankly baffled. Without a dog in the race, so to speak, but deeply committed to the concept of global justice and understanding, Isaksen leaped headlong into the project with the help of contacts arranged through various Norwegian literary and cultural societies. The result, set of hard-hitting essays, serves as an excellent introduction for any thinking person who wants to know more about Palestinian and Israeli literature. Isaksen allows such luminaries as Amos Oz, Liana Badr, Etgar Keret and Salman Natour to speak candidly about literature, and what it can and cannot do in terms of creating peace and justice. A great many of the interviews also explode the notion that there is any one tidy definition of "Israeli" or "Palestinian," as the subjects proudly give voice to the complex tangle of cultural and religious roots that permeate the Middle East, and make it difficult to draw distinctions between "us" and "them."
The collection's greatest strength lies in its editor's ability to recede to the background and let the authors' experiences speak for themselves. From time to time Isaksen's idealistic, wide-eyed innocence intrudes on the narrative, but for the most part he executes the role of curious outsider skillfully, cheerfully setting himself up as a foil for the blunt opinions expressed by his interviewees. Time after time, Isaksen's dreamy notion that literature can build bridges and achieve peace are shot down by the repetitive realities of life during wartime. We learn, for example, that while Israeli texts are often translated into Arabic, there is virtually no funding for reciprocal translation of Palestinian authors into Hebrew. Complicating matters is the fact that neither culture's school system is particularly open to teaching literature produced by its perceived enemies. Even if more texts existed, the chances of their being read and discussed intelligently would be slim to none. Other dreamy thought-balloons that burst are the notion that the literature has prophetic qualities, a concept Isaksen raises hopefully again and again only to be dismissed by a cadre of writers and thinkers who advocate realism over idealism. And while most of the authors interviewed believe strongly that both Israel and Palestine should be granted independent nation-states, they disavow any power to make such a thing happen solely through a canon of writings. Literature can, they argue, function as a tool to allow individuals to connect and see beyond their stereotypes of the enemy. It cannot, however, move governments to lay down their guns, or persuade bombers to spare innocent lives.
By turns blunt, messy and disturbing, Isaksen's collection gives voice to both the horrors of war and the anger of voices denied proper expression. This is not a book designed to comfort the Western intellectual who wants easy answers and idealistic solutions. It is, instead, a collection designed to spark passionate debate in schools, libraries, coffee shops, churches, synagogues, mosques, and town hall meetings. It also contains an extensive bibliography of literature available in English and Norwegian, as well as mini-biographies of all the authors interviewed, making it easy for the motivated reader to learn more. As a point of entry to a difficult topic, Literature and War is recommended for conscious readers who appreciate the complexity of both literature and global events, and are both smart enough and humble enough to learn exactly how much more they have to learn.
Literature and War: Conversations With Israeli and Palestinian Writers
Author: Runo Isaksen
Translator: Kari Dickson
Release Date: October 2008
Publisher: Olive Branch Press
ISBN: 978-1566567305
Leigh Anne Vrabel currently works as a senior staff librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main). When she's not answering questions or recommending books, she coordinates the library's Eleventh Stack blog project http://eleventhstack.wordpress.com. Leigh Anne has reviewed books for Library Journal and the Social Responsibilities Roundtable Newsletter, and considers herself a lifelong reader, writer, critic and thinker.
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