The Parisian

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The Parisian

By: Isabella Hammad

Narrated by: Fiona Button

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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Parisian written by Isabella Hammad, read by Fiona Button.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2020*

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD FICTION AWARD 2019*

As the First World War shatters families, destroys friendships and kills lovers, a young Palestinian dreamer sets out to find himself.

Midhat Kamal picks his way across a fractured world, from the shifting politics of the Middle East to the dinner tables of Montpellier and a newly tumultuous Paris. He discovers that everything is fragile: love turns to loss, friends become enemies and everyone is looking for a place to belong.

Isabella Hammad delicately unpicks the tangled politics and personal tragedies of a turbulent era – the Palestinian struggle for independence, the strife of the early twentieth century and the looming shadow of the Second World War. An intensely human story amidst a global conflict, The Parisian is historical fiction with a remarkable contemporary voice.

20th Century

Genre Fiction

Historical

Historical Fiction

Literary Fiction

World Literature

Fiction

Romance

Middle East

Middle Ages

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Critic reviews

"The Parisian is a sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful. Isabella Hammad is an enormous talent and her book is a wonder." (Zadie Smith)

Most relevant

This novel was written in a style reminiscent of 19th century French realist writers: massive attention to realistic detail and just occasionally a little too informative. It is the story of a young bourgeois Palestinian's experiences in France and how these experiences colour the rest of his life.The book spans twenty years and is set iinitially in Paris and later in Nablus against the backdrop of the Palestinian struggle for independence.
Any-one interested in the history of Palestine under the Ottomans and the beginnings of Zionism will find the historic detail interesting even if Hammad does occasionally veer off at a tangent to include historical events.
Regrettably the narration when the novel moved to Nablus was problematic for me. Fiona Button has a lovely French accent and she reads English with emotion and warmth but her pronunciation of even the names of characters and simple greetings in Arabic was excrutiatingly bad ,to such an extent that I lost the thread of the story on a couple of occasions. It is unforgivable not to be able to pronounce Ahmed, Faisal or Mahmoud correctly, or to call a male character Adèle (Adel). Perhaps it might have been better to use a narrator with a knowledge of Arabic as the dialogue is peppered with Arabic phrases?
This is a long novel, and should possibly have been pruned a little by the editor, but it was definitely worth my time.