Lanterns of the King of Galilee, the Palestinian Comedy

A new novel by the poet and novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah has been published, entitled Lanterns of the King of Galilee, to be the seventh novel in his novelistic project, the Palestinian Comedy, along with The Time of White Horses, The Eraser Child, Birds of Caution, Street Olives, Safe Weddings, and Under the Morning Sun. With the publication of this novel, the Palestinian Comedy has covered a spiritual, national, and human time span over 250 years of modern Palestinian history. “Lanterns of the King of Galilee” is a foundational novel, not only in terms of the novelistic writing that travels far into Palestinian time, which here is the end of the seventeenth century and almost the entire eighteenth century (1689-1775), but in its deeper search for the foundations of the formation of identity and human self in this region extending between two seas, the Sea of ​​Galilee (Tiberias) and the Sea of ​​Acre. It is an epic climax with which Ibrahim Nasrallah raises his novelistic project, and the project of Palestinian comedy in particular, to a lofty position, as he writes the epic of that leader “Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani” who rebelled against Turkish rule and sought to establish the first modern national political entity in Palestine, and the first national entity in the Arab East. This unique leader whose borders (state) extended from Palestine to many regions outside it. This novel traverses history and illuminates it in a dazzling manner with real and imaginary characters moving between Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Istanbul, kneading history with great values ​​and questions of love, death, fate and the relationship with nature in its deepest manifestations, and contemplating history. The spiritual and mythological history of Palestine, and a return to the consideration of a brilliant Palestinian national struggle history, for a historical leader unique in his understanding of the values ​​of dignity, justice, liberation, and the right to life, and religious tolerance that reaches an unusual degree of breadth and nobility. “Qanadeel King of Galilee” is a brilliant and rare epic, presenting us with rich, unknown pages, with high artistry, rearranging the national and human struggle history, Palestinian and Arab anew. At a time when our Arab peoples are experiencing the spring of their revolutions, the character of Zahir al-Omar appears to be one of the most unique characters in his quest to establish an independent state that is based on the values ​​of tolerance and respect for all segments of society, and preserving human dignity and placing it above all considerations, and to that his rejection of inheritance at that time.