The Children of the Ghetto: II: Star of the Sea by Elias Khoury (Translated by Humphrey Davies)

An acclaimed Lebanese writer speaks to the complexity of the Palestinian experience in a devastating account of resilience and loss

“Gives voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages.” — Edward Said

Weaving personal and cultural memory into a tale that humanizes the complex Palestinian experience, Star of the Sea traces the contours of the unspeakable.

Adam Dannoun’s story is one of beginnings. Born in a war-torn Israel, Adam dreams of becoming a writer. He is just an infant when Jewish forces uproot and massacre thousands of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba, including his own father. Adam’s mother, crumbling with loss, takes her son to Haifa and remarries. Soon she feels stifled by her new husband. Adam flees this lifeless home and writes himself a second beginning. With nothing but his father’s will and the image of his mother at the doorway, Adam is born again into the streets of Haifa.

Here he spins a new life alongside an auto-shop owner, Gabriel. Adam Dannoun shapeshifts into Adam Danon, an Israeli born into the Warsaw ghetto, and Gabriel’s younger brother. There are limits to this charade, lines he’s forbidden to cross—and when he falls in love with Gabriel’s only daughter he steps, unawares, into a third life. Life after life, Adam confronts the horrors of his past.

Following My Name Is Adam, Star of the Sea is the second installment of a brilliant trilogy—an epic tale of love, survival, and ongoing devastation.