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Der Autor:
"Rabii
Jaber, born in 1972 in a village in the Jebel Duruz and today working
at the al-Hayât-Bureau in Beirut is an almost frantically productive
writer. Main representative of the young Lebanese literature, he is a
breathtaking juggler with styles and themes that he takes from contemporary
Lebanese life, from pre-war or even older Lebanese history (the 19th or
the early 20th centuries), and even from other literary works.
Der Roman:
Its Lebanese
history he tells in al-Farrâsha al-zarqâ´ ("The
Blue Butterfly"), a novel published originally in 1996 under the
pen name of Nur Khater. "In the beginning there was my grandmother's
story about her litte brother", so the novel starts, "also about
Joseph and Jurji B., about the silk factory and its French owner Prosper
P. They were stories that have accompanied me since the days of my childhood
but were never quite sufficient to make a novel. So I had to wait. Then,
after writing nine novels and publishing three and after S. had left me
I had the impression to have reached the beginning. And I thought I would
start with my grandmother's funeral."
That's what the narrator does. He tells the grandmother's stories intermingling
them with his own souvenirs of her and all that has happened to him with
S., who had left him. The result is a beautiful description of village
life in the Jebel Duruz, mainly during the first half of the 20th century
sometimes reaching back into the 19th. At times there is a fairy tale
like tone, when, for example, Prosper P. dreams of the blue butterfly,
thus balancing the numerous technical and scientific details about the
raising of silk-worms and the production of silk.
(aus H.F., " .", Banipal )
Leseprobe
(PDF)
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