Sayed Kashua

Anna Bernard (King's College London)
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In Sayed Kashua’s most recent novel,

Second Person Singular

(

Guf sheni yachid,

2010), the first-person narrator Amir, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, acquires an identity card belonging to an Israeli Jew. The owner of the card is a young man Amir’s own age who is in a vegetative state after a suicide attempt. Amir uses the ID card to apply for admission to Bezalel, Israel’s national art academy, where he begins a new life: “I was Yonatan Forschmidt: Israeli, white, Ashkenazi, a consumer of Western culture. I was not Sephardic and I was not the token Arab” (283; page numbers refer to the published English translations of the Hebrew texts). As Yonatan, Amir is privy to the conversations that the Jewish students have amongst themselves about Arabs:

The only thing they really

1783 words

Citation: Bernard, Anna. "Sayed Kashua". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 August 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13077, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13077 Sayed Kashua 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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