Prairie Al-Himma

The new edition of the novel “Prairie Al-Himma” by the renowned Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah appears to be a re-reading of this work, reshaping and reorganizing reality to form for the reader an intellectual framework or a more in-depth reading of history, defined by the boundaries of geography. Thus, the novel appears to be the best means of expressing the depth of Arab cultural life, free from the influence of today’s dominant media. In the Wilds of Fever, the novelist is preoccupied with expressing the inner space of the Arab person. It is a disturbing novel revolving around questions of the self, alienation and isolation, life and dreams, imagination and wakefulness, beginnings and endings, doubt and certainty. The novelist includes all of these terms in his dictionary, brimming with a poetic and literary artistic mixture steeped in connotations and cognitive abilities, which Nasrallah transforms in this text into concepts and interpretations through which he expresses those confused worlds of the post-modern era, which writers consider one of the most delicate aesthetic experiences imbued with the spirit of modernity. The author has fully internalized modernity, as if he was born into it. In this work, the novelist has mastered the use of a brilliant narrative technique for this fragmentation of consciousness and duality experienced by the main character in the work. He uses the character of the teacher, Muhammad Hammad, as a framework for expressing the inner visions of the Arab person’s being, immersing himself deeply in the space of experience, the experience of the desert, where the novel’s events take place in “Al-Qunfudhah” and “Sabt Shamran.” Nasrallah takes you God” in its valleys, a journey that transcends space to traverse with him the depths of living and inanimate beings in that desolate desert.
He says: “Sabt Shamran: stones distributed between two hills of black rocks. When you enter them, you are surprised by the eastern part. Also, at the top of a peak dotted with ancient castles, stones gleam like knives piercing the chests of birds, the blue sky, and the sun’s disc seeking shade between the houses. Sabt Shamran is a year of sorrow and blood, a year of death.” “Prairies of Fever” is more than a novel, more than a lived experience. It is a question of fate and the meaning of life. When reading it, we remember that illusions exist above ground, while facts float in the sky. Nothing is certain in this life. The only certainty is the human struggle that is born at every moment, as the absurdity of reality transforms into tales that are told, becoming pure tales unfit to be lived.