The collection “The Hidden One Who Survives Interpretation” includes 28 poems, some of which are short and some are long, and deals with emotional, national, philosophical and contemplative issues. The relationship with women constitutes an important axis in the collection based on the poet’s refined humane and civilized view of women. Exile also constitutes a major axis since the poet lives in exile. Many years ago. The poet also resorts to writing abstract, contemplative poems sometimes as a result of his interaction with external existence and his preoccupation with humanizing things. The collection in our hands is the eighth in the series of Anwar Al-Khatib’s poetry publications, and it comes in the context of his poetic project that aspires to establish a different language and a different, vibrant and diverse construction of the Arabic poem, so that it escapes itself from routine, repetition, and rigid templates.
Jeremy visits the island of Mauritius, to investigate his family history, and search for the last traces of the extinct dodo bird. His journey intersects with an opposite journey undertaken by Dominic, a tramp who was born to laugh, as he says about himself. Between the two journeys, stories reproduce and multiply, and as the narrative progresses, the world of Alma is built, which modern times have transformed into “Maya Land”: a land of illusions.
Burdened with noble goals, five young Frenchmen embark on a journey to deliver humanitarian aid to the Kakani region in Bosnia, during the period of civil war, but what began as a dangerous humanitarian mission on a bumpy road in the snow and cold, took a different path that made all their assumptions subject to question and skepticism. What's really in the boxes? Where are they going? What awaits them there on the other end? In addition to having to cross real checkpoints, they will also face more difficult intellectual barriers. What do the victims really need: survival or victory? What must be found: the animal survival instinct that requires only food and housing, or the human sense of dignity that requires means of resistance?
In an interesting and well-paced plot, the French writer Jean-Christophe Ruffin raises very profound questions about humanitarian work: its feasibility, its motives, and how to be truly humanitarian to the fullest extent. These are questions that the novel's characters keep asking themselves, and to each other, throughout a dangerous journey that may change their convictions, and perhaps their destinies, forever.
