Point of View

The point of view that Isabella Hammad employs in her novel is a third person limited perspective. She follows the protagonist, Midhat, in his journey across space and time, from Nablus to Montpellier to Paris and back, across the decades of his life. This limited perspective, though certainly not as personal as a first-person narrative, creates a sense of proximity and connection between the reader and the protagonist that Hammad cultivates in order to inject emotion and sympathy into the many twists and turns of Midhat’s life. The choice to remain in a third-person perspective circumvents the problem of an unreliable or restricted narrator, as Midhat is in an environment in which he has an imperfect understanding of the language for a major portion of the novel. In addition, the third-person perspective ensures she is not limited to just Midhat’s experiences in crafting...