LAUSR

better be understood as the product of ongoing conditions rather than as responses to specific events? Abu Manneh’s argument about the move from realism to modernism is not entirely convincing, relying as it does on an oversimplification of the trajectory and Jabra and Kanafani’s writings, and privileging the defining events of Palestinian history over other regional and local developments and conditions that profoundly affected the lives of the writers he analyzes in different ways. Nonetheless, The Palestinian Novel deserves to be read for its sensitive literary engagement and its thoughtful readings of key texts.