REVIEW: “Personal Hero” by Abdalmuti Maqboul

Review of Abdalmuti Maqboul, Yasmine Seale (trans.) “Personal Hero”, in Basma Ghalayini, ed., Palestine+100, (Comma Press, 2019): 95-102 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I think I ended up reading this story three times over. The first time, every few paragraphs I paused and reread what I had just read, until I reached the end having read it twice, and then I went back and reread it in one go. For such a short story, it is quite complex; it took me awhile to realise that instead of looking purely to the future, as many of the other stories in the anthology do, this one also marches slowly but surely into the past. It isn’t quite time-travel but it is such that reading the story and rereading it is definitely recommended.