My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century - Softcover

"'A rich tapestry of the personal, the literary and the political, skillfully woven by a sympathetic writer... Hoffman's intense but often humorous book is a powerful reminder of the singularity and complexity of this most intractable of conflicts and of the ability of the human spirit to be creative in adversity.' The Guardian 'Veering between biography, history, journalism and memoir, this painstakingly researched work is a human-scale picture of the generally under-reported history of the Palestinians in Israel as well as an accessible introduction to their poetry... Ms Hoffman's book is unpretentious, principled and utterly charming.' The Economist 'Adina Hoffman's writing is historical magic... A series of brilliantly told and searing stories, this is at once a page-turner and a book to be savored.' Maria Rosa Menocal, author of The Ornament of the World"

This first biography of a Palestinian writer also provides a moving account of the ways "ordinary" individuals are swept up by the floodtides of both war and peace Beautifully written, and composed with a novelist's eye for detail,this booktells the story of an exceptional man and the culture from which he emerged. Taha Muhammad Ali was born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya and was forced to flee during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, at the same time evolving into what National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Eliot Weinberger has dubbed "perhaps the most accessible and delightful poet alive today." As it places Muhammad Ali's life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as "among the five `must read' books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy." In an era when talk of the "Clash of Civilizations" dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.