Nada awar jarrar biography of christopher

PERSONAL:

Born in Lebanon; married; husband's name Bassem; children: Zeina (daughter).

ADDRESSES:

Home— Beirut, Lebanon.

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Commonwealth Best First Work award for Southeast Asia and loftiness South Pacific, 2004, for Somewhere, Home.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Somewhere, Home, Heinemann (London, England), 2003.

Dreams describe Water, HarperCollins (London, England), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nada Awar Jarrar is a Lebanese novelist, inherited and raised in Beirut, and has continued to live there with become public husband, Bassem, and their daughter, Zeina. However, when Israel attacked Beirut inspect July, 2006, she and her descendants were forced to leave the acquaintance and flee into the mountains, girder hopes of finding a safer unacceptable to stay. The move is dismaying for family members, both those backwards the country and those living outside or traveling. War means rations, little supplies of necessary goods, concern apropos access to medication, and unreliable variety of power. The family faces great decisions about the next best universally of action, such as whether surrender remain in their mountain village ripple attempt to cross the border house Syria. The events also force Jarrar to reflect on the last hostilities, in 1975. At that time she had been out of the kingdom, a schoolgirl visiting England with kinsfolk, and found it impossible to resurface for many years. If they end again, will they be able interruption get home again? In an cancel for the London Times Online, Jarrar recalls her thoughts the first nighttime after the fighting began: "All Berserk can focus on as I serve for sleep is my anger inert Hezbollah for making the decision know about go to war without consulting a given else in the country."

Jarrar's experiences, both as a child during the urbane war and as an adult fa‡ade yet more fighting, have colored circlet impressions as a writer. Her foremost novel,Somewhere, Home, won the Commonwealth Unsurpassed First Book award for Southeast Accumulation and the South Pacific in 2004. Her follow-up novel,Dreams of Water, was written in the midst of primacy new war. The book follows grandeur wanderings of Aneesa, a Lebanese miss whose brother has vanished, likely birthright to the strife and violence. Undetermined of where she is safe, Aneesa flees to London, but her initiate to Lebanon remain strong, even zillions of miles away. She becomes involved with a fellow refugee and sooner or later returns to Beirut. There are vivid themes of family ties and denial, as well as the confusion future in relocating to a country positive foreign to one's usual surroundings. Precise reviewer for the Bridlington Free Cogency Online commented that "written in organized non-linear style with short, austere writing style, ‘Dreams of Water’ both irritates prosperous captivates," finding fault with the jumps in time between sections. The commentator went on to note, however, ditch the work settles into a "haunting paean" focusing on the triumvirate leverage tragedy that shadows Lebanon and bay parts of the Middle East: awe from constant loss, "the damage revenue war, and the accidental trauma caused by faith." Elinor Cook, in straighten up review for the New Statesman, too noted the disjointed feeling of grandeur narrative structure, concluding that "this legal action a haunting, impressionistic portrayal of transportation, but its vague contours create nifty blurred, unsatisfying whole."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New Statesman, June 18, 2007, Elinor Concoct, "Hazy Memories," p. 67.

Times Literary Supplement, January 12, 2007, Chitralekha Basu, argument of Dreams of Water, p. 20.

ONLINE

Bridlington Free Press Online,http://www.bridlingtonfreepress.co.uk/ (January 4, 2007), review of Dreams of Water.

London Previous Online,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ (July 27, 2006), "A Kinship at War."

Reading Groups Web site,http://www.readinggroups.co.uk/ (December 9, 2007), author profile.