The Blue Light

by Hussein Barghouthi, Fady Joudah (Translator)

The Blue Light is an autobiographical novel in chapters and vignettes that travels through memory, time, and language.

Hussein Bargouthi tells his story with Bari, a Turkish American Sufi, during Bargouthi’s years as a graduate student at the University of Washington in the late 1980s. The Blue Light has several beginnings and many returns—from Beirut’s traumatic sea to musings on color and identity, from Buddhist paths to Rajneesh disciples, from military rule to colonial insanity, from drug addiction to sacred rock. Written and lived between Arabic and English, this is a unique book whose depth is as clear as its surface. It will tempt you to dismiss it as it compels you to devour it for illumination. Merging memoir with fiction, and the hallowed with the profane, The Blue Light is a meditation on and liberation from madness—a brilliant, inimitable literary achievement.

Genres: Fiction

168 pages, Hardcover

Published March 6, 2023

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published posthumously after his death, this somewhat surreal account of the author's obsession with his own sanity, his boyhood in Palestine and in Lebanon, and the odd assortment of characters he was drawn to while studying in Seattle blends memoir and fiction. At the centre is Bari, a Sufi from Turkey who acts as a kind of sage for the narrator as he struggles to understand himself. It is strange and engaging and filled with the wisdom only madness can bring. As Mahmoud Darwish says on the blurb on the back: this "peculiar mix of confession and contemplation, hallucination and mythology, reality and the unrevealed... may be the most beautiful achievement in Palestinian prose." I will write more about this intriguing and thought provoking work in a few days.

[Jane Fudger · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this short auto biography about Barghouthi's early life especially after reading his book, "Among the Almond Trees" about returning to Palestine following his terminal cancer diagnosis.[see my review for details].
This book however followed his family's exile from Palestine to Beirut and a subsequent exile to America The main body of the book is about his student times in Seattleand also Budapest. However rather then a straightforward narrative it is told through various relions and dreams to the extent that it combines memoir with Sufism, Buddism and fictionmaking it more a dystopian story rather then an auto biography.
Some people I am sure will enjoy the work but unfortunately I found it disappointing and lacking any relation to what could have been an interesting memoir.

[Batool ! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will be always on of my favorites!

[Khalid Dader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mindfuck of how it oscillates between the daily life conversations yet touching hyperdeep ideas and worlding. Fascinating read. Read it in Arabic.