ISBN: 9781803090832

Hardcover: 168 pages
Publisher: Seagull Books, 2023
Language: English

Hussein Bargouthi tells his story with Bari, a Turkish American Sufi, during Bargouthi’s years as a graduate student at the University of Washington in the late 1980s. The Blue Light has several beginnings and many returns—from Beirut’s traumatic sea to musings on color and identity, from Buddhist paths to Rajneesh disciples, from military rule to colonial insanity, from drug addiction to sacred rock. Written and lived between Arabic and English, this is a unique book whose depth is as clear as its surface. It will tempt you to dismiss it as it compels you to devour it for illumination. Merging memoir with fiction, and the hallowed with the profane, The Blue Light is a meditation on and liberation from madness—a brilliant, inimitable literary achievement.

Translated by Fady Joudah.

Hussein Barghouthi (1954–2002) was a Palestinian poet, writer, essayist, critic, lyricist, playwright and philosopher, born in the village of Kobar in the Ramallah. He obtained an MA and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Washington–Seattle. He returned to Palestine to become a professor of philosophy and cultural studies at Birzeit University, and went on to work in Al-Quds University as a professor of literature critique and theatre. Barghouthi died in 2002 in Ramallah after a long struggle with cancer. His best-known work The Blue Light is forthcoming in English translation in 2022 from Seagull Books.