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Rating: 
Summary: Long live the Pessoptimist
Review: Saeed the Pessoptimist now ranks in my pantheon of comic heroes up there with Swejk, Yossarian, Candide, Don Quixote and Joe from "Milagro Beanfield War."
This is a book to be read over and over again.
For Americans like me persuaded to believe Israelis occupied an empty land (Palestine) after the horrors of WWII, Edward Said's works are helpful. For the feeling and experience of a Palestinian in Israel, however, Habibi gave us a distilled, comic masterpiece. "The Pessoptimist" is not just one more protest novel. Habibi ranks in the history of the comic novel for his amazing treatment of Time. Time itself -- history -- become original comic characters in this novel, their companions being Saeed's "friends from outer space." The author said Swejk and Candide inspired him. "Pessoptimist" is picaresque but the chapters (events, whatever) are written in a style of wonderful, unique, surreal journalism that span many years rather than occurring within the context of a single journey. So, quite aside from Habibi's achievement in making Palestinians real (a neat trick at present and one that won't make your life any easier when you watch the news) I think his style adds something to the development of the comic novel. It opens new possibilities for treating time and history. So it is a real contribution to the understanding we gain from literature.
Rating:
Summary: The Victor and the Vanquished
Review: Saeed, the narrator of the story, belongs to the large family of Pessoptimists. He can feel like a pessimist, or like an optimist, but can never tell the two apart. Saeed is an Arab. When Israel conquered part of Palestine, he did not flee but stayed behind to become an Israeli citizen. That did not help him much - Arab remains Arab. The book is a humorous allegory, wrapped around everyday Arab life, with a bitter nucleus of Israeli oppression. Like Voltaire?s Candide, Saeed believes that this is the best of all worlds. To him it seems quite natural that the occupying forces arrest people in the middle of the night for no reason, that they deport them, that they blow up houses, and that they devastate whole villages. After all, they won the war, and everything - and everybody - now belongs to them. There are those Arabs who want to retaliate immediately. But they are told that the tree is not loved for its flowers, but for its fruit. After all, it took them close to two hundred years to throw out the crusaders. Saeed is the simple soul who sees what goes on around him, but cannot understand why it is so. The bitterness comes with the explanation. Mr. Habiby wrote a devastating satire. His own life paralleled that of Saeed: he was an Arab in Israel, even a member of the Israeli parliament. He wrote this book almost 30 years ago. It is still valid.
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