The Story of Zahra [Hardcover]

Hanan Al-Shaykh (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Reader's International, 1996; First Edition edition (1996)
• ASIN: B0013BC92M
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A WOMAN'S SEARCH FOR PEACE IN AN AT WAR WORLD, April 14, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Story of Zahra: A Novel (Paperback)

A Lebanese writer now living in London, al-Shaykh has been praised as the Arab world's leading woman novelist. Her Women of Sand and Myrrh was a breakthrough in its revelatory descriptions of Arab women's lives.

The Story of Zahra has been banned in seven Arab countries because it candidly addresses of a personal and political nature.

Zahra, a child of the Shia community in south Lebanon is deceived and abused by her parents. To escape, she seeks a haven with her uncle who is living as a political exile in West Africa. Regrettably, he, too, seeks to use her as "the key to making contact with my past as well as my future."

Returning to Beirut to escape a loveless marriage, Zahra finds a strife torn city ablaze with civil war. There she misguidedly enters into a liaison with a sniper in the hopes of saving others. What would her life be like if the violence and gunfire would ever end?

The Story of Zahra is a chillingly told story of a woman's search for peace in a world ravaged by war.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, July 26, 2000

By 

Leila Hussein (Cedar Rapids, Iowa USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Story of Zahra: A Novel (Paperback)

In response to the Lebanese reviewer who knows "everything" about being Lebanese.....this book is purely fiction! However, the author, herself being Lebanese used different aspects of Lebanese culture and society as a setting to her beautiful and saddening story. The story is set upon the horror of civil war and the breakdown of society that inevitably occurs as the war drags on. The story is not supposed to be a true story or one that you could find happened to a typical Lebanese survivor of the war. It is, however, a story about how war can destroy the very fibers of a person's life who is not a member of any warring faction. It is truly a heartbreaking story of a woman-child who struggles to hold onto her own sanity. From, Another Lebanese

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars review by alyssa shultz 3/26/07, March 26, 2007

By 

Alyssa M. Shultz - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Story of Zahra: A Novel (Paperback)

The Story of Zahra is about a girl who has never matured into a woman, despite her years and experience. Trapped in her inability to conquer the world within her, Zahra lives as a victim, perpetuating her own dilemma, attracting the disrespect that she holds for herself. She was never given the tools to empower her identity in her own social construct, always searching to understand the mess complicating her situation. Zahra has a resistant spirit that is grossly contaminated by an obedient attitude towards anyone who wishes to use her or degrade her emotionally. Never has she been instructed or taught by observation the ways of carrying ones self in this world to aspire to something better. Zahra has an extreme faith in her own failure and lacks any aspirations, wallowing in defeat daily simply because she exists. The cultural setting for The Story of Zahra makes it difficult for me to appreciate the book for all it is worth. This is because it perpetuates dominating stereotypes that have been delivered through social learning and Westernized media in the United States, leading its citizens to believe they are more evolved than "savage" people in foreign lands such as the lands this story takes place in. Zahra's story is universal despite our not having a war at home, social entrapment is a curse that so many face in every different society. Free will is governed by circumstance that demands compromise, diverting us from our intentions. The seriousness of this opposition to our motivations ranges from person to person along with the affect it has on ones autonomy and opportunity. Also one's ability to overcome these constraints against personal liberty powerfully navigates his or her range of options. Zahra is obviously broken. Almost everyone she comes in contact with in the novel is broken as well, but they are at least adjusted to their incapacities. Zahra is a strong fighter on the inside; she does not succumb to an adaptation for happiness. She does not force herself to find some sort of a false contentment with things that fully displease her, she holds disdain for them. Her struggle remains to be her perceived inability to grow as a female and create her own situations. Her life's purpose becomes by default a reason for other people to feel superior, giving everyone who comes into contact with her a false sense of power. She lives and breathes dehumanization, becoming an object or a tool with no matter. The deconstructive chaos that is war relieved her for a short while from her silent struggle, until it became a new world of pain. She is a masochist, and just as she talks of taking on pain like a sponge, she activates it in her own doings by letting everyone walk all over her.