On Men in the Sun
Kanafani, Ghassan. Men in the Sun: and Other Palestinian Stories. Reissue ed. Translated by Hilary Kipatrick. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. pp. 117. Paperback. $16.95.
This is an incredible collection of Kanafani’s novella “Men in the Sun” along with some of his short stories. “Men in the Sun” is plainly the standout — it feels a lot like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath until the way it ends — rich with symbolism, with a sense of impotence, figurative and literal, running all through it. The rest of the stories are more variable, but I really liked “Falcon,” dense with symbolism, and “A Hand in the Grave.”