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Title: The Hostage: A Novel (Emerging Voices Series) by Zayd Muti Dammaj, May Jayyusi, Christopher Tingley ISBN: 1-56656-140-X Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 2
Summary: I think the translation must be bad.
Comment: I picked up this book with a lot of hope. Yemen is a country that fascinates me and particularly this period of history (early 20th century) and their efforts to repel foreign influence and colonialism. The story itself is quite good: a boy is taken hostage in order to secure his father's political loyalty to a local governor. It is a story of how the boy deals with the various tasks set before him and how he struggles for both literal and intellectual freedom. Sounds great right? Well, the synopsis is unfortunately the best part of the book. The dialogue in the book is so stiff and unbelievable that its almost embarassingly bad. The story line leaps all around. I think there are too many leaps in the plot and assumptions in the story (and the reader would be TOTALLY lost if it weren't for the two introductions.) Like I said, I feel the translation must be sorely lacking because this is hailed as a work of genius. If I try my best to read around the simple language and terrible dialogue, I *think* it may be good in the original language (hence 2 stars and not just 1.) That being said, I would avoid this book unless you can read it in Arabic, because in English...it is a waste of time.

Rating: 5
Summary: It is one of the best Arabic novels in this century.
Comment: It is rich in creativity and deep in its simplicity. It is about a real historical period in the Yemen's mid 20th century. Zayd Dammaj, the foremost Yemeni writer had made it more enjoyable to discover and to live a different world that it seems to be an imaginary one while it was indeed real. The greatness of the work is not only because of fulfilling the condition of a creative novel, but also because the author undertook the difficult task of amazingly writing a very important period of the temporary history of his people with a very creative, simple and interesting way. The locality of the novel had made it clear that it is the best way to reach the universality