"In 1986 Israeli writers and readers alike were startled by the appearance of a novel about an Arab village in the Galilee and the protean identity of its narrator. That this first novel was written in resourceful and often eloquent Hebrew and in a highly sophisticated narrative mode was remarkable enough. But even more provocative and significant was the identity of the author. For Anton Shammas was not another aspiring Jewish author haunted by the shadow world of the Palesitinains- a familiar theme in Israeli literature- but an author who regarded himself as an Israeli Palestinian, an impossible combination in itself. Shammas wrote Arabesques, in apt, to serve as his "real identity card," the first to be issued for a bi-national culture in that fiercely divided land"--
