2 out of 4 stars
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Andalusians are those who live in Andalusia, which is an autonomous community in Southern Spain. It is officially recognised as a historical nationality. Andalusians are a Romance-Arabic ethnic group, who speaks Andalusian Spanish, which is recognised as a distinct dialect.
No introduction is needed for Jerusalem, the ancient city, to which many have claimed for the ownership and because of that, subjected to and still being subjected, from time to time, to numerous conflicts.
With that background knowledge, let’s go to the review of Andalusian in Jerusalem by Mois Benarroch. First of all I should warn you, that the book was not much organized, so will be my review as well.
It was a short novel. There were only 96 pages in my copy and there was a continuous story, without dividing it into chapters.
The story is about the author going to Jerusalem for an authors’ meeting, and meeting up with a series of unexplainable scenarios and situations, including his meeting with a woman who claimed that she is her mother, meeting a girl who is introduced as his daughter, of whose existence he was not even aware of, and he being kidnapped by a group of people and asking him to write an article to tell the world, that the Jews lived in Jerusalem even 2000 years ago, based on some memory they retrieved from water (theory of water memory).
Though the superficial story was so, the author has discussed some major topics, which can be argued over, for hours. I must admit, that I did not even understand some of them. I will only mention some of the topics discussed, without any of my own opinions regarding them. So they are open for the discussion, of those who read this review.
Mois discusses mainly about various political facts regarding Jews, including how they were treated by various nations and the sufferings of the Jews. Forcing people to change their religion, which is done by both Muslims and Christians in the history, is another such topic. Author shows that, many family lines have a mixture of religions in them due to the aforesaid fact. Monogamy versus polygamy and the disturbing nature of mobile phones to the human relationships are also discussed.
The author has tried to discuss many facts through this short fiction and, I felt like the book is really disorganized. To add some more discussion, author has put a manuscript in the middle of the book, which is shown as a writing of one of his friend. This clearly disrupted the flow and made me really annoyed. I usually do not sleep while reading, but this book changed it. It was that much boring to me.
Proof reading was done well and only few printing mistakes were noted.
The good side of this book to me was learning some new things including Andalusia, Jerusalem Syndrome (it is a mental phenomenon, which is triggered by a visit to Jerusalem. It is not a recognised mental illness) and the theory of water memory (the theory which tells that the water can retain memory of objects, with which it came to contact with).
With all that, I will give this a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. I will recommend this book to those who like to read philosophical and political discussions.
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Andalusian in Jerusalem
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