Book Review on the Prejudice in Irseal Essay - 527 Words

To preface this review I want to begin by saying how much I enjoyed this book. I was skeptical about it because I had never heard of it before and because it was assigned in a class. However, I was pleasantly surprised how intrigued I became and how invested I was in the story. I know very little about the prejudices in Isreal amongst the Arabs and the struggles they meet. The book contains two stories, which at first seem unrelated, but eventually run into one another. The first story presented is about a lawyer, whose name we never learn and is always referred to as â€Å"the lawyer.† I was curious throughout the book why that was, potentially it was an attempted to shadow identity or make the character more relatable. The lawyers story†¦show more content†¦While the lawyers story focuses on class discrimination, we see the effects of racism against Arabs. Amir’s narrative continually refers to having to show his identity card to classify his nationality. B oth the lawyer and Amir attempted to recreate a new identity for themselves. Amir, nevertheless, took this cause more literally. At first it was a harmless swap of identity card to get into a prestigious art school, but it quickly progressed and led to Amir completely taking the identity of the Jewish boy he took care of. Due to his false Jewish identity, he was treated differently in the art school than how he would have been if he were truthful about his heritage. Learning the author’s background, it is easy to see the motivation for the writing of the novel. Sayed Kashua is a Israeli Arab authors who has written four books and is a journalist who is known for his humoristic columns. The authors was born and raised in Tira, in the Triangle region of Israel. He attended a prestigious Israeli school. The connections between him and the characters he created are obvious. Again, I loved this book. Although it dragged at times, I thought it was fantastically written. I found my self invested in the life of the characters, especially as I was rooting for Amir to find true happiness. Even past its entertainment value, the book helped me have a