Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi (American University of Beirut)

Ed. by Nora Parr, SOAS, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 6.1.3: Middle-Eastern Arabic Writing and Culture: Modern and Contemporary.
Vol. editors: Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University), Anastasia Valassopoulos (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 1920
Died 1994
Activity 1939-1994

Places

Born in Palestine
Active in Iraq

Cultural Identities

Arab-diasporic (non anglophone/francophone)

Activities

Primary

Artist
Autobiographer
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Translator

Other

Art Theorist/ Historian/ Critic
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Jabra's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra can be described in many ways: a Palestinian writer; an exile in Iraq; a novelist; a poet; a translator of Shakespeare, Faulkner, and Beckett; a university professor; a lover of classical music; an artist; an art critic; an intellectual; a cosmopolitan spirit; a humanist. As the Palestinian scholar Issa Boullata suggests, he can be considered one of the last men of the

nahḍa

, the so-called Arab awakening or renaissance of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (2002: 82). At the crossroads of the colonial and postcolonial era, Jabra’s life unfolded first in his homeland Palestine and, after 1948, in exile in Iraq. Despite, or perhaps because of the

nakba

– the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 which went hand in hand with the first…

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2624 words

Citation: Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja. "Jabra Ibrahim Jabra". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14062, accessed 21 November 2024.]