Nassib, Selim 1946- (Selim Nassib-Turquier)

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Nassib, Selim 1946- (Selim Nassib-Turquier)

PERSONAL:

Born 1946, in Beirut, Lebanon.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Paris, France.

CAREER:

Journalist, writer, editor, and cinematographer. Reporter for various newspapers, including Libération in France. Cinematographer and editor for the film Paradise Now (as Selim Nassib-Turquier); editor of the film.

WRITINGS:

(With Caroline Tisdall) Beirut—Frontline Story, photographs by Chris Steele-Perkins, Africa World Press (Trenton, NJ), 1983.

L'homme Assis: Contes, Balland (Paris, France), 1991.

Oum, Editions Balland (Paris, France), 1994.

(Author of text, with Charles-Henri Favrod) Shanta Rao, Alemshaye et autres histoires de femmes, Marval (Paris, France), 1995, published as Stories of Women, Dewi Lewis Publishing (Stockport, England), 1995.

I Loved You for Your Voice, Europa Editions (New York, NY), 2006.

The Palestinian Lover (also published as A Lover in Palestine), translated by Alison Anderson, Europa Editions (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of the television film La Madonne et le Dragon, 1990. Contributor to books, including Paix en Galilée, Beyrouth, Editions de Minuit, Paris, France, 1983.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist Selim Nassib is also a novelist who writes about the relationship between a famous Arab female singer and an Egyptian poet in his novel I Loved You for Your Voice. The poet and singer, who remain nameless in the novel, are based on the real-life Ahmad Rami and Om Kalthoum. In the fictionalized account of their relationship, which ranges from the singer's youth when the poet first meets her until the singer is in her sixties, the author writes of the poet's obsession with the singer and the ultimate destructive impact it has on his life. Noting the author's "rapt, lyrical prose," a Kirkus Reviews contributor called I Loved You for Your Voice "an eloquent lament."

Nassib writes another fictional account of a relationship involving a real person in his novel The Palestinian Lover, also published as A Lover in Palestine. This time the author writes of Golda Meir and a supposed love affair she had in her younger days with a Palestinian banker. The novel takes place before Meir becomes prime minister of Israel, when she is still predominantly spending her time as a wife and mother but is already a noted political consultant. The story begins in the 1920s and follows the couple on through the arrival of Jewish immigrants in Israel in 1934 and the eventual Palestinian displacement in 1948. "Foregrounded by romance and a dream of unity, the novel is an elegy to lost possibilities," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Noting that "Nassib tells the story … in a series of short but intense chapters which present the lovers' encounters as both defiant and elemental," Joan Smith, writing in London's Independent, went on to comment that "one of the achievements of The Palestinian Lover is its vivid portrait of Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s."