"Men in the Sun" by Ghassan Kanafani ****

> Palestinian author, died in 1972 when car exploded, evidence pointed towards Israel

> Orig. published 1956, short story collection

> "Men in the Sun":

• Three men try to get to Kuwait with the help of a lorry driver and all die when they must stay in the tank of the lorry longer than expected
• intensity of the sun is metaphor for the intensity of what they are willing to risk and endure to reach their goal
• "Just imagine! In my own mind I compare these hundred and fifty kilometres to the path which God in the Quran promised his creatures they must cross before being directed either to Paradise or to Hell. If anyone falls he goes to Hell, and if anyone crosses safely he reaches Paradise. Here the angels are the frontier guards."
• "....patience is the brother to agreement."

> "The Land of Sad Oranges":

• A family and servants flee after Jews force them from their homes, and a young child's perspective makes the story
• "Pain had begun to undermine the child's simple mind"
• Oranges symbolized the homeland....
• "You were huddled there , as far from your childhod as you were from the land of the oranges - the oranges which, accrding to a peasant who used to cultivate them until he left, would shrivel up if a change occurred and they were watered by a strange hand".......

> "If You Were a Horse...":

• A father lives in fear that his son will be the death of him
• Can Fate be interfered with or changed?

> "A Hand in the Grave":

• Two med students intend to steal a skeleton from a graveyard and are foiled by fear
• Not a particularly good story

> "Umm Saad":

• A mother is proud to have her son leave to join the fedayeen

> "The Falcon":

• Acceptance of the difference in the nature of each creature

> "Letter From Gaza":

• An amputated limb is the symbol of how a young man would feel if he were to leave his war torn country to seek personal gain
• "Come back, to learn from Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is worth."

> LibraryThing Review: This is a collection of short stories written by a Palestinian author who was assasinated by car bomb in 1972. He himself left palestine as a young child, moved around the Middle East, finally settling in Beirut, Lebanon. This short story collection was well written, moving, and surprisingly devoid of anger. The stories tell tales of loss, courage, danger which although literally set in the Middle East, are really about universal truths of being a human being. The prose is very good, the plots moving and powerful, and I was left with a deep sense of how much a person can endure in order to survive.....loss of life, loss of a homeland, loss of a child, loss of a friend. So, in the end, the stories share the thread of loss and how it impacts the human heart.