Product Description

New York, 2001 As Hanan al-Shaykh travels through the streets of Manhattan to her daughter's wedding her mind is elsewhere. Remembering own secret ceremony some thirty years ago, her thoughts turn to her mother, Kamila, who was sacrificed into marriage: her absent mother who, in recent, reconciled years, has pleaded with Hanan, her daughter the writer, to tell this story. Lebanon, 1934. Kamila is nine years old when she is taken from the poverty of her childhood village in southern Lebanon to Beirut. Though she has never learned to read or write, stories, poetry and films are her passion, and she longs to go to school. Instead, she is to lead a life of domestic servitude-and worse, she has been secretly betrothed to her brother-in-law, Abu-Hussein, a man eighteen years her senior. A welcome escape from the strict household, Kamila is apprenticed to Fatme the seamstress. One day Kamila catches sight of a beautiful young man, Muhammad, sitting by a fountain. At the age of thirteen, for what will be the first and only time in her life, Kamila falls deeply in love. The following year, to her fury and anguish, Kamila is married to Abu-Hussein. That night, he forces himself upon his child-bride and a daughter is conceived: four years later, Kamila's second daughter, Hanan, is born. In secret, but risking everything, Kamila continues to see Muhammad. But in choosing to follow her heart, she must also, agonisingly, leave behind her beloved daughters Beautifully evoking the fabric of life in Lebanon, The Locust and the Bird is a remarkable and intensely moving memoir. Told in a voice that is entirely distinctive and authentic, this unique portrait of the life of one woman gives us an astonishing insight into the lives of many others in the Arab world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95790 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
`Al-Shaykh is an important Arab voice which must be heard now' --Giles Coren, The Times

Review
`The Locust and the Bird puts to rest every stereotype about the Arab world and its women'

Review
`A fearless, pioneering Lebanese writer'

Customer Reviews

wonderful, emotional, gripping
I absolutely loved this book.... A funny, sad, emotional story about the life of a Lebanese woman in the 1940s-1950s. Something we don't usually read about. What a life Kamila led, I really became gripped by her tale, she was so strong, fighting all the obstacles in her path. But what was most touching was the way the author got to know her mother properly whilst writing this book, understanding her and understanding why her mother had to leave when she was young.

I didn't flinch from the emotion in this book. It made it 'real' and ever more interesting to read a 'real' story about the strength and resilience of women in this part of the world.

A definite KEEPER!

A lovely read!
I caught the last episode of this book on Woman's Hour, Radio 4 and so decided to buy the book.

Well I wasn't disappointed. The book is set in Lebanon in the 40's and 50's and is about Kamila, an illiterate young girl tricked into marriage with her dead sisters husband, a much older, religious and humble man, but this is not before she has already fallen in love with Mohammed, a young student. She could have accepted her life but instead fights the many obstacles in her path and is indeed a strong, fearless woman but feckless and dishonest too. From this alliance she bears two daughters, the youngest, Hanan, the author of this book.

She eventually meets Mohammed again and there starts the beginning of a long love affair until eventually a divorce is arranged. However, marriage to Mohammed is not the dream she had thought it would be and that in turn brings disappointment.

What I particularly liked about this book was that with a clearer understanding of why her mother had to leave her at such a young age/and that there are always two sides to a story, the relationship between mother and daughter improved.

Yes, this is certainly a book I would keep and at the present time it is on loan to one of my own daughters!!

Disappointing
Found this book in a charity shop on the day of publication which suggests that somebody who had a review copy didn't think it was a 'keeper'. Nor do I ... though I had been looking forward to reading it, as it has attracted quite a lot of media attention.
'It is an extraordinarily brave act for a writer to undertake to inhabit, fully and sympathetically, the life her mother lived before she was born, particularly when her mother was no jewel of wifely virtue,' JM Coetzee writes on the covernotes.
Hanan Al-Sheikh's mother, Kamila, who never learned to read or write, begged her daughter for years to write her story; berating her, when she wrote novels about Arab women's lives, for 'nibbling at other people's dishes,' when there was a true story closer to home.
Kamila, who was born in Lebanon in 1925, was only 11 when she was tricked into a betrothal to her late half-sister's widowed husband Abu-Hussein, who was nearly 30. Her feckless father sold his permission in exchange for gold pieces; her divorced and penniless mother, dependent on the extended family, was hardly in any position to stand up for her.
But at the age of 13 - before the marriage is enforced - Kamila falls in love with a handsome young boy Mohammed whom she sees sitting at a fountain. The following year, to her great distress and Mohammed's, the marriage takes place, her husband forces himself on her - and, still in her teens, she gives birth to two daughters.
But for years she carries on a scandalous affair with her real love Mohammed, snatching passionate afternoons in his bedroom while her husband is at work. Until, at last, Mohammed engineers a divorce for her and she chooses life with him above her daughters. (Not quite as bad a betrayal as it sounds because they seem to have had very liberal visiting rights. But it certainly affected her relationship with her daughter Hanan for many years.)
All her life, Kamila has been a fan of extravagant Arabic movies, and to the end she sees her relationship with Mohammed as something straight off the silver screen...
The book is translated from the Arabic and I think all this highflown emotion is what in the end made it rather tiresome to me. Kamila is so giddy and irresponsible, her head is so high in the clouds, that it is hard to sympathise with her as much as you'd like to. In fact, I found my sympathies often lay with her serious religious husband -who married her against her will, but boy, what a handful he was landed with!
And yet Kamila's feisty, optimistic spirit is very engaging.
For all her vicissitudes, what made me angriest on her behalf was that she never learned to read and write, signing her name with a doodled picture of a rose because a thumbprint would be too shaming. 'Let me tell you how it hurts when a piece of wood and a piece of lead [a pencil] defeat me,' she berated her daughter, as she begged for her story to be told.
But somehow, although this book has all the ingredients, it didn't engage me completely ... and I think it might just be a culture clash, that my AngloSaxon soul flinches from this flood of emotionalism. Other readers, I'm sure, might easily love it.
But in recent years there does seem to have been a glut of very similar stories ... and I did feel that I had read it all before.