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Master of the Eclipse
A collection of stories about displacement, love, loss, poetry and war, from the Lebanese poet and painter who has been called “arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab-American author writing today” (Melus).
The stories in Master of the Eclipse are populated by filmmakers, poets, girls, professors, and prostitutes who live in Beirut, Paris, Sicily, California, Saddam’s Iraq, and New York. The world of these stories is ours, with the same occupations and wars—a “world that would be a cemetery” were it not also a place where taxis are “yellow flowers floating down the avenues.”
From the collection’s title story, a long meditation on history and war, power and poetry, to its concluding tale, a strangely quiet vision of a tree floating in a Damascus stream, Etel Adnan’s painterly vision, her cosmopolitan flexibility, and her philosophical bent are on full display. This is a woman, after all, trained in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, who became a painter, and then a poet. Her voice comes to us as something the opposite of her title: She is a master of light and revelation, of language, variety, and color.
The stories in Master of the Eclipse are populated by filmmakers, poets, girls, professors, and prostitutes who live in Beirut, Paris, Sicily, California, Saddam’s Iraq, and New York. The world of these stories is ours, with the same occupations and wars—a “world that would be a cemetery” were it not also a place where taxis are “yellow flowers floating down the avenues.”
From the collection’s title story, a long meditation on history and war, power and poetry, to its concluding tale, a strangely quiet vision of a tree floating in a Damascus stream, Etel Adnan’s painterly vision, her cosmopolitan flexibility, and her philosophical bent are on full display. This is a woman, after all, trained in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley, who became a painter, and then a poet. Her voice comes to us as something the opposite of her title: She is a master of light and revelation, of language, variety, and color.
168 pages, Paperback
First published March 16, 2009
16 people are currently reading
390 people want to read
About the author
Etel Adnan
92 books354 followersEtel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1925. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, U.C. Berkeley, and at Harvard, and taught at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, from 1958–1972.
In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.
In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.
In solidarity with the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), Adnan began to resist the political implications of writing in French and became a painter. Then, through her participation in the movement against the Vietnam War (1959–1975), she began to write poetry and became, in her words, “an American poet.” In 1972, she returned to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers—first for Al Safa, then for L’Orient le Jour. Her novel Sitt Marie-Rose, published in Paris in 1977, won the France-Pays Arabes award and has been translated into more than ten languages.
In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. Adnan is the author of more than a dozen books in English, including Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986), The Arab Apocalypse (1989), In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country (2005), and Sea and Fog (2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent books are Night (2016) and Surge (2018). In 2014, she was awarded one of France’s highest cultural honors: l’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Numerous museums have presented solo exhibitions of Adnan’s work, including SFMoMA; Zentrum Paul Klee; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; Serpentine Galleries; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 26, 2022
This is not a collection of poetry and I’m not a poet but damn this made me want poetry more, to write it, just be around it. Not as a balm. As a way of seeing the haunting of the present maybe. My favorite story here was “the first passion”, basically about the movie theater as an education in longing. Ends with this devastation: “This is why everyone kills his or her own love, out of desperation; we lose the battle in fearing to lose it, we prefer to die than to doubt, we suffer in order not to suffer; we are doomed, and we are wrong.”
September 9, 2025
Prosaic, giving word to an experience Arabs have seemingly been sharing for over a century now. It renders my heart heavy, as all good literature does
October 1, 2018
Etel Adnan writes with a simple prose that is nevertheless enigmatic and sometimes breathtaking. The title piece traces Adnan's encounters and conversations with the Kurdish Iraqi poet Buland al-Haidari (1926-1996). The conversations and observations skip from place to place, at literature festivals, in taxis. The unseen backdrop is the Iraq-Kuwait war. Its epigraph is from Hölderlin: "What are poets for in these destitute times?" Adnan's answer seems to be that the poet's role is to first listen. To listen to the sadness and the despair, to listen to the tales of love and lost love, to listen to the recollections of nearly committing suicide. And then to transform what has been heard into a kind of poetry.
The stories in Master of the Eclipse (stories that are both true, apparently, and fictional) are excerpts from various lives, including Adnan's, always suggesting what is unsaid and what lies before and after the spare tale that we read. This is a beautiful and thoughtful book.
The stories in Master of the Eclipse (stories that are both true, apparently, and fictional) are excerpts from various lives, including Adnan's, always suggesting what is unsaid and what lies before and after the spare tale that we read. This is a beautiful and thoughtful book.
May 13, 2024
The title story, “Master of the eclipse,” is told by a writer reminiscing about her acquaintance, a Kurdish Iraqi poet, a man declining in both health and sanity as a result of the catastrophic war in his adopted county. It ends with a punch: a damming critique of American imperialism personified as a skeptical American academic.
“The power of death” is the narrator’s remembrance of a friend consumed with the memory of his first girlfriend. He learns of her death, and proceeds to obsessively fantasize about her, turning his grief into a self-destructive cycle of drunken hallucinations and abuse of others.
In “An American Malady,” an invalid in Paris bemoans the television journalists’ coverage of the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s.
In “annunciation,” the narrator listens to an older man break the news to his overly dependent mother that he intends to marry to “bring new life into the house.”
“First Passion” The narrator reminisces about a childhood friend who could have been her first lover.
“My friend Kate” is a tale of the disintegration of childhood friends as they age.
In “Eavesdropping” the narrator and a friend drop into a Paris restaurant and overhear two unhappy couple talking about their relationships. One of which is dramatically concluded when the woman walks out on the man.
“Yellow, yellow cab” is the tale of a former female executive, a recovering alcoholic who now drives a cab and her tragic demise.
“Listen, Hassan” is a California money launderer’s rant to his Arab translator in Damascus as the foul mouthed American slowly loses control.
“Amal Hayati,” the title of a song of love and acceptance, is the ironic title of this tale of family tragedy during the Syrian civil war when a dispute arises between members of the army and civilians pleading for better sanitation.
“The radio” is a story of despair from a Palestinian refugee camp, located just south of Beirut.
“A stream near Damascus” tells of a mysterious life saver.
Adman’s technique in many of her stories are often told as if they were reports told to the narrator by someone else, a friend or a stranger, or as if they were personal memories.
“The power of death” is the narrator’s remembrance of a friend consumed with the memory of his first girlfriend. He learns of her death, and proceeds to obsessively fantasize about her, turning his grief into a self-destructive cycle of drunken hallucinations and abuse of others.
In “An American Malady,” an invalid in Paris bemoans the television journalists’ coverage of the Lebanese civil war of the 1980s.
In “annunciation,” the narrator listens to an older man break the news to his overly dependent mother that he intends to marry to “bring new life into the house.”
“First Passion” The narrator reminisces about a childhood friend who could have been her first lover.
“My friend Kate” is a tale of the disintegration of childhood friends as they age.
In “Eavesdropping” the narrator and a friend drop into a Paris restaurant and overhear two unhappy couple talking about their relationships. One of which is dramatically concluded when the woman walks out on the man.
“Yellow, yellow cab” is the tale of a former female executive, a recovering alcoholic who now drives a cab and her tragic demise.
“Listen, Hassan” is a California money launderer’s rant to his Arab translator in Damascus as the foul mouthed American slowly loses control.
“Amal Hayati,” the title of a song of love and acceptance, is the ironic title of this tale of family tragedy during the Syrian civil war when a dispute arises between members of the army and civilians pleading for better sanitation.
“The radio” is a story of despair from a Palestinian refugee camp, located just south of Beirut.
“A stream near Damascus” tells of a mysterious life saver.
Adman’s technique in many of her stories are often told as if they were reports told to the narrator by someone else, a friend or a stranger, or as if they were personal memories.
August 5, 2024
What can you even say about a collection of stories this beautifully devastating. This must be what it feels like to stand on a ridge, watching in horror as wildfire destroys every inch of forest below. At least — that’s all I am able to imagine as a white man, born in the wealthiest nation in the world, whose only personal experience of war comes through screens or on pages of books.
Master of the Eclipse holds us down and pins our eyelids open to prevent us from looking away from tragedy in the global south — a tendency, an adaptation we have developed in the west, whether we realize it or not, because it would be too traumatic to come to terms with it.
“You’re all nihilists, aren’t you?” We’re all the contemplatives of an ongoing apocalypse. So what’s left for us to think about….” This is the question. And this is the poet’s purpose. To tell us. And this is our purpose. To listen. And to preserve. Those who leave this world too soon, too tragically, must live on in history. Banning books? BURNING books?? We must remember. And we must take the small steps, do the right things when we can.
One of the most tragic themes in this collection (for me) is the idea that if we live in fear of someone, something for long enough, we eventually worship it. Think about the term “God-fearing.” What happens the further in time we get from a singular, omnipotent creator and the ones who wield all of the knowledge, the power, the control are mortal, earthly men?
Master of the Eclipse holds us down and pins our eyelids open to prevent us from looking away from tragedy in the global south — a tendency, an adaptation we have developed in the west, whether we realize it or not, because it would be too traumatic to come to terms with it.
“You’re all nihilists, aren’t you?” We’re all the contemplatives of an ongoing apocalypse. So what’s left for us to think about….” This is the question. And this is the poet’s purpose. To tell us. And this is our purpose. To listen. And to preserve. Those who leave this world too soon, too tragically, must live on in history. Banning books? BURNING books?? We must remember. And we must take the small steps, do the right things when we can.
One of the most tragic themes in this collection (for me) is the idea that if we live in fear of someone, something for long enough, we eventually worship it. Think about the term “God-fearing.” What happens the further in time we get from a singular, omnipotent creator and the ones who wield all of the knowledge, the power, the control are mortal, earthly men?
October 15, 2024
"What's his power? It's awesome, we know, but what is it?
It is the power to crush bones from a distance. Distance is of essential importance. It renders responsibility invisible and retaliation impossible. This power is multiplied by the ability to enter every consciecne, to paralyze all impulses for curiosity or happiness, to silence doubt, to destroy any rebellion of the spirit, introduce self-censorship to the point of turning minds into mortal silence."
Thinking about this passage about American imperialism today.
It is the power to crush bones from a distance. Distance is of essential importance. It renders responsibility invisible and retaliation impossible. This power is multiplied by the ability to enter every consciecne, to paralyze all impulses for curiosity or happiness, to silence doubt, to destroy any rebellion of the spirit, introduce self-censorship to the point of turning minds into mortal silence."
Thinking about this passage about American imperialism today.
October 1, 2020
I will be more melancholic than ever before after enjoying these bittersweet tales. My favorite line about California comes from a story set in Damascus. In California, "You can speak to whoever you want".
November 15, 2016
Writing was good and characters were interesting, but stories were a bit too esoteric for my tastes. This was my first Adnan experience and I will try other works. 3.5
April 25, 2024
Lovely fluid prose, but most of the stories felt a little beside the point, a little adjacent, a little unfocused.
January 1, 2023
None of the stories evoked the imagery, tragedy, and revelation as the titular first in the collection. The others moved languidly and tangentially, recounting benign moments who’s ambiguity worked against her otherwise heavy handed prose. Some of Adnan’s insights were wonderfully refreshing and mystical, but the collection is bogged down by her often long-winded prose, which I found to be extremely tiring after the third vignette. As another reviewer put, this book is esoteric, almost impenetrable at times. I’d like to think that it went over my head, with my inability to see substance in Adnan’s assortment of tales being my fault, and not due to the shortcomings of the storyteller. I would-enthusiastically-recommend the first story in this collection, however, the others are too aimless for my taste.
March 30, 2010
Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, has chosen to discuss Etel Adnan’s
Master of the Eclipse
on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject- Contemporary Arts, saying that:
“…Etel Adnan is in her mid 80s and she is one of my heroes. She is one of the great poets of her time and also a wonderful visual artist. Master of the Eclipse is short stories, full of filmmakers, poets, and it moves between geographies (she lives near San Francisco, but also in Paris and Beirut). It is about displacement.…”
The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/hans...
“…Etel Adnan is in her mid 80s and she is one of my heroes. She is one of the great poets of her time and also a wonderful visual artist. Master of the Eclipse is short stories, full of filmmakers, poets, and it moves between geographies (she lives near San Francisco, but also in Paris and Beirut). It is about displacement.…”
The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/hans...
November 20, 2009
Profound & even life changing. I find Etel Adnan to be one of the finest minds of our time. This book is ample proof.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews