A review by sharkybookshelf
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad

2.0

Midhat Kammal leaves Palestine in 1914 to study medicine in France, returning in 1919 to a country engulfed in turmoil…

I had high hopes for this one, set during a crucial and turbulent time period during which much of what is happening today has its roots. Regretfully, it turned out to be an absolute slog - I hadn’t expected the plot to have a romantic bent (though it’s not a romance), but central to the story is Midhat, whom I didn’t care much about as a character, and his love life, which I had absolutely no interest in.

I strongly considered DNFing but persevered because the political side of the story was very interesting - the early arrivals of Zionists, the differing views on how to achieve independence (and even the various visions of what independence would mean), the political factions and tensions between them, all of which are relevant to Palestine as we know it today - understanding the history of a place and people is always a key component of contextualising events today (whether conflictual or not). I also found Midhat’s time in France as a medical student interesting to read about - a strange time when only foreigners remained as almost all the French young men were called to the front, but of course that didn’t stop biases and racism from bubbling up.

As fascinating as the politics and history were, they did not compensate for the slog of reading about Midhat and his boring love dilemmas. I loved that Hammad didn’t shy away from the complexities of the various political machinations, I just wish she’d come up with a more interesting (and interested!) character to propel the story.

A fascinating presentation of the tumultuous politics of Palestine between the two World Wars, but an incredibly dull main character and central storyline turned the whole book into a slog.