Customer Reviews

Scattered Like Seeds: A Novel

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"Scattered Like Seeds" is a touching and moving historical novel of a successful Palestinian- American lawyer whose heart is torn between love for his native land of Palestine and his adopted land, the United States. Any first- or second- generation American with feeling for his or her own roots will identify with Thafer Allam as he returns to the Middle East to become Chief Consul for the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). This book will appeal alike to lovers of human interest stories and history. Using Daniel C. Dillers's "The Middle East", Simha Flapan's "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities", and Mohamed Heikel's "The Road to Ramadan" as sources, the book presents the little- known Arab side of the 1973 war and oil embargo.

While it provides an easy and enjoyable read, Scattered Like Seeds is, at the same time, a thought-provoking work replete with contradictions and lessons about the power of space and place.

This historical novel evokes two emerging themes based on contradictory relationships, namely the immigrant's attachment to both the native country and the adopted country and, more importantly, the post World War II displacement of people from their homeland and the associated combination of cultural tension and understanding that is epitomized by the main character, Thafer.

The author's skillfully depicted narrative also points to a sense of powerlessness and isolation that is at the core of a displaced people's existence-a cataclysmic experience that forever touches the Palestinian immigrant's identity as he grapples with emergent contradictions of human emotions -- love, respect and patriotism-through the insightful prism of history, geography and culture.

One would also add that this book is about very relationships--both professional and personal-- in an area of the world that has long been overlooked. The events of September 11, 2001 awakened us to a new reality. It is time to revert our attention and begin to garner knowledge of our shared collective human experience with the peoples of the Middle East. Toward that effort, this book would be a premier introduction. I recommend it highly for both the general readership and for the classroom. It is a first-rate text promoting cultural understanding and much needed discussion about the intricacies of our changing global community.

I picked up this book by chance and could not put it down. The author writes about the on-going strife between Israel and the Palestinians over the past several decades, always optimistic that sooner or later, they will resolve their issues and make peace. And reading this book right after the September 01 tragedies shows how his optimism was unfortunately incorrect. But I learned so much more about the region and the conflicts while enjoying a very human family drama at the same time.

Excellent novel that takes the reader past the news headlines into the real life saga of the Palestinians, the heart of the Middle East conflict. Told in a way that is rarely offered in American literature and providing balance to the sometimes one-sided portrayal of the emotion-packed Middle East conflict. I loved it! Ray Hanania

While this novel is fiction, its author paints a picture of the Arab Israeli conflict that is immediately credible and fascinating to behold. His knowledge of history, geography, and psychology translates into pages of a book that captivates the reader from beginning to end.
Here is the story of an American torn between his love for his family in Palestine and his family in the United States. This is a novel about a people fighting for a home of its own.
This book should be required reading in every school, college, and university where students need to learn the true story of the Palestinian people. Americans need to know why we have violence in the Middle East, why people live in poverty and desperation because they have no home.

I read this book as in college at Syracuse University while taking a class from Shaw Dallal. His book, based on many events in his own life including some his invasive experiences when returning to Israel as an American, was the kind of story I like: real, believable, with a happy ending. It's a shame that the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict could not have such a happy ending.