A Sparrow from the East

Description

A Sparrow from the East, a novel by Tawfiq al-Hakim, was published in 1938. It was translated and published in French in 1946 (first edition), and a second edition was published in Paris in 1960.

The novel is a true reflection of the state of impoverished French society at that time. Therefore, the novel’s plot cannot be reduced to a failed love story between the hero and heroine; rather, its true meaning lies in the clash of civilizations and the prevailing ideologies. The novel attempts to search for a lost dream and, through the character of Monsieur Ivanovich, explores the concept of utopia. It speaks of the Eastern protagonist’s bewilderment in Paris, his poignant and dreamy love story, and the conflict between East and West, reality and imagination, mind and heart, modernity and tradition, science and faith, materialism and spirituality. At the end, the author clearly criticizes the effects of the post-industrial revolution in the West, the new forms of slavery, the transformation of humans into cogs in giant machines, and other phenomena relatively new at the time of the writing.