The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist

Emile Habibi · 1922–1996 · Palestine / Israel

Originally al-Mutasha'il (Arabic) · translated by Trevor Le Gassick and Salma Khadra Jayyusi

Why it matters

A hapless collaborator-informant navigates Israeli rule with absurdist passivity, his contradictions piling up past anything a sane man or a sane state could resolve. Satire so sharp its title coined a new Arabic word for the condition it describes.

At a glance

Absurdist, episodic picaresque with epistolary framing and dense political allegory.