Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff

by Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, Sasson Somekh, Jacqueline Kahanoff

The writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (1917–1979) offer a refreshing reassessment of Arab-Jewish relations in the Middle East. A member of the bourgeois Jewish community in Cairo, Kahanoff grew up in a time of coexistence. She spent the years of World War II in New York City, where she launched her writing career with publications in prominent American journals. Kahanoff later settled in Israel, where she became a noted cultural and literary critic. Mongrels or Marvels offers Kahanoff's most influential and engaging writings, selected from essays and works of fiction that anticipate contemporary concerns about cultural integration in immigrant societies. Confronted with the breakdown of cosmopolitan Egyptian society, and the stereotypes she encountered as a Jew from the Arab world, she developed a social model, Levantinism, that embraces the idea of a pluralist, multicultural society and counters the prevailing attitudes and identity politics in the Middle East with the possibility of mutual respect and acceptance.

Genres: Judaism

303 pages, Hardcover

First published June 25, 2009

Reviews

[Jad Hawili · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Very colourful first chapter. Ideoligies are all constructions but Levantinism as an idea rules relatively to other ideologies. A lot of romanticism and nostalgia of the past that can be perceived through her recollection of Kahanoff memories in a process to look for a clearer identity.. Although in some part some confirmation bias exist. To be read with an active mindset. One of my fav