Book at the Museum. Stella Maris. About the book by Iljas Churi

Adam Dannun is a Palestinian who miraculously survived the Nakba and grew up in a ghetto created by the Israeli army in Lydda. At the age of fifteen, he leaves his mother because he feels like an enemy in his stepfather's house. Because he has light eyes and knows Hebrew, he can easily pass for a Jew. To forget his previous life, he decides to take a chance and become what others want him to be. He reminds the owner of a car repair shop, who came from Poland, of his brother who died fighting for Haifa. He does not try to explain to the professor of Hebrew literature at the university that there is no point in going to Warsaw to search for his roots. A meeting with Marek Edelman will open his eyes to other paradoxes of history...

 

Iljas Churi begins his story where others remain silent. He enters the very core of the painful intertwining of Jewish and Palestinian fate. Resisting the temptation of simplifications and shortcuts, he creates a complex, polyphonic story of two nations marked by violence and death. Is it possible to break free from trauma and start a new life? How can we tell the story of those who have been erased? In what ways is memory worse than voluntary amnesia? These are just some of the questions faced by the characters in the book.

 

This beautiful, deeply humanistic and gut-wrenching novel makes us rethink many issues that we took for granted and takes us to places we would rather not see. At the very center of Churi's reflection are truth and falsehood – the author explores the usefulness and durability of these categories in writing history and creating narratives.

„Stella Maris” is the second volume of the trilogy entitled „Dzieci getta”(Children of the Ghetto). The first volume recounts other stages of Adam Dannun's life. Thanks to Churi's extraordinary literary skill, the volumes can be read in any order.