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Dreams My Father Sold Me: Poems and Graphic Art of Nabil Shaban

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The evil slug-monster Sil is one of the great villains in the old British Dr. Who series. Not one you'd peg for a sensitive poet and lover, a creative artist, and an activist who will stand up fearlessly for the underdog. Yet the man inside that Sil costume, disabled actor Nabil Shaban, is all of those, as shown in "Dreams My Father Sold Me," a handsome book of his paintings and poetry.

To understand the book you have to understand something of Shaban's life. Born with brittle-bone disease in Amman, Jordan, he was brought to England for medical treatment when he was three years old, and essentially dumped. For years, he would see his parents only on brief visits. In the impersonal institutions of his youth, he was taught "skills" like basket-weaving, and didn't even learn to read until he was 14.

Not surprisingly, he grew up a rebel who longed for love and companionship while believing that no woman could ever love a man with his misshapen, wheelchair-bound body (a belief now happily overturned). He saw acting as an escape. Even then, he literally had to help found a disabled theater company (Graeae, based in London) in order to get his first paid acting job.

His poems are startling, teasing, and provocative, sometimes funny and sometimes gut-wrenching, but always heartfelt. They carry the reader to the farthest reaches of where the imagination floats free in a sea of suggestions.

The art work shows the same qualities. No tame flower arrangements or anodyne landscapes here, but roaring beauty and provocative mind-games for the eye, images of sexual longing and terror, visions of a nameless soul searching for fulfillment. Some nudes. What? You mean men in wheelchairs don't long for women? Think again - this book will help you re-examine ideas of all sorts.

Contains an introduction by British actor Colin Baker (former Dr. Who) as well as an introduction by the author and a foreward by Lord Richard Attenborough.