The Cat Who Taught Me How to Fly

An Arab Prison Novel

Hashem Gharaibeh, Nesreen Akhtarkhavari

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781611862287
• eBook ISBN:
  9781628952841
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In his masterpiece The Cat Who Taught Me How to Fly, Hashem Gharaibeh tells the moving story of a political prisoner during Jordan's martial law era, which spanned from 1967 to 1989. Gharaibeh defies the taboos of politics, sex, and religion to tell a thrilling and brutally honest story about the horrors and insanities of everyday life in an Arab prison. At once both a novel and an autobiography, the author draws from his own experiences as a Jordanian youth arrested and imprisoned for nearly a decade for his affiliation with the Jordanian Communist Party. The novel uniquely portrays prison culture intertwined with tribal, ideological, and political perspectives to explain both mundane and esoteric aspects of prison life in this time and era, illustrating an experience that is traumatic, humane, and inspiring. A heartwrenching story of learning, survival, and the quest for the freedom of thought is told with powerful defiance and grace, exposing us to human frailty, strength, and one man's dream to soar beyond the walls of prison, society, and self.
 
 

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Translator’s Introduction
• Dreams, My Novel, and Me: The Novel The Cat Who Taught Me How to Fly
• The Stranger’s Cage
• The Trial
• The Comrade
• Karma
• The Denouncement
• The Break
• The Cage of the Righteous
• A Coup
• The Cobia Pen
• The White House
• The Narrator
• Eid
• Irbid
• The Nude’s Island
• The Reconciliation
• Maha
• Mad
• Winter Returns
• The Cat
• The Secret of the Dungeon
• No Way Out
• Notes