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غناء البطريق
في مبنى صغير في نهاية طريق غير مُعبَّد، يعيش شاب معوَّقٌ جسدياً، مع والد عجوز يضعف نظره يوماً بعد يوم، ووالدة لا تفكِّر سوى بالهرب من مهامها اليومية
العائلة النازحة تتقوقع في عزلتها. ولولا أعمال البناء القريبة، لغابت الأحداث الخارجية عن يومياتها. لكن الحياة تزهر في شقة تحت شقّتهم مباشرة، حيث تقطن فتاة مع أمّها. وعبر نافذة مفتوحة، تغذّي الفتاة مخيّلة متّقدة لصاحب جسد البطريق، الذي يغزل مناجاته الداخلية كغناء متواصل. هكذا، وإلى أن تقوم المدينة القديمة من خرابها، أو تفلح المدينة الجديدة، تضمحلّ ملامح السويّة الإنسانية، ويبدو الانتظار بلا نهاية...
العائلة النازحة تتقوقع في عزلتها. ولولا أعمال البناء القريبة، لغابت الأحداث الخارجية عن يومياتها. لكن الحياة تزهر في شقة تحت شقّتهم مباشرة، حيث تقطن فتاة مع أمّها. وعبر نافذة مفتوحة، تغذّي الفتاة مخيّلة متّقدة لصاحب جسد البطريق، الذي يغزل مناجاته الداخلية كغناء متواصل. هكذا، وإلى أن تقوم المدينة القديمة من خرابها، أو تفلح المدينة الجديدة، تضمحلّ ملامح السويّة الإنسانية، ويبدو الانتظار بلا نهاية...
- GenresLebanonNovelsMiddle East
205 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
5 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
حسن داوود
20 books73 followersحسن داوود — روائي لبناني، مواليد بيروت 1950. حاز شهادة الكفاءة في الأدب العربي من كليّة التربية، الجامعة اللبنانية. عمل في الصحافة الأدبية في السفير التي أدار تحرير ملحقها الأسبوعي، وفي الحياة (-1988 1999)، كما في المستقبل التي رأَسَ تحرير ملحقها الثقافي «نوافذ» (1999-2012).
صدرت له مجموعات قصصية وأعمال روائية من بينها «بناية ماتيلد» (1983)، «غناء البطريق» (1998) التي حازت جائزة المنتدى الثقافي اللبناني في فرنسا، «مئة وثمانون غروباً» التي مُنحت جائزة المتوسط الإيطالية (2009)، و«لا طريق إلى الجنّة» التي نالت جائزة نجيب محفوظ للرواية العربية (2015). وقد تُرجمت رواياته إلى لغات عدّة.
صدرت له مجموعات قصصية وأعمال روائية من بينها «بناية ماتيلد» (1983)، «غناء البطريق» (1998) التي حازت جائزة المنتدى الثقافي اللبناني في فرنسا، «مئة وثمانون غروباً» التي مُنحت جائزة المتوسط الإيطالية (2009)، و«لا طريق إلى الجنّة» التي نالت جائزة نجيب محفوظ للرواية العربية (2015). وقد تُرجمت رواياته إلى لغات عدّة.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 11, 2012
رواية وجدتها فقيرة جداً وكرههتها وكدت احرقها ، ندمت على ما دفعته فيها فهي لا تستحق القراءة ، لم افهمها ولم اجد فيها ما يثير سوى رخص في استعمال اللغة والجنس في غير محله خصوصا انه كان من معاق فاي شهوة لامرأة النافذة تجاه معاق ، تافهه ولاتعجبني ولم استبدلها أبدا أبدا وتكاد تكون أسوا ما قرات
October 8, 2012
جميلة هي الروايات التي لا تسرد الحكايات
و كأن الوصف الغير مباشر للأحداث القليلة، كان خوفا من أن يوقظ القازئ من الهدوء الذي يلفها
و كأن الوصف الغير مباشر للأحداث القليلة، كان خوفا من أن يوقظ القازئ من الهدوء الذي يلفها
July 1, 2012
لاتستحق دقيقه اكثر من وقتي. لن اكملها. ولن اقرأ لحسن داوود مرة اخرى.لا يعجبني اسلوبه بالكتابه ولا المضمون.
February 10, 2023
When working through boxes and stacks of books, I don’t always remember why I bought a particular book. I’ve read a lot of Middle Eastern literature over the years, but there is also a lot out there to read. It was only once I started reading Penguin’s Song and realized that the main character is disabled. That’s why I wanted to read this book!
Daoud gives the character agency, subjectivity, a mind, a voice. He is the narrator and seems a fully-developed character rather than a one or two dimensional ableist construction. He is observant and articulate, and over the course of the novel he achieves greater agency and independence. There seems to be much potential here, but in the end "Penguin’s Song" is a sad tale of quiet desperation, hopelessness, and a narrow, reduced life.
The novel is set in Beirut during and after the civil war. The main characters are a family of three: father, mother, son. There is no extended family and no circle of friends or acquaintances. No one in the novel has a name. The father had a storefront in the Old City selling various and sundry goods. Because of the war, businesses are shut down and people are moved out of the Old City to newer, safer parts of Beirut. While other businessmen start new businesses in their new locations, the father does not. He seems to have been traumatized, and so they live on dwindling savings for the next 13+ years in their small claustrophobic apartment. From Daoud’s descriptions–shortened limbs, small hands, curved lower back–the son seems to have achondroplasia: the body is non-normative, but he is mobile.
The parents are initially very protective of their son. He goes to the father’s business, but the father only has him sit in a chair, even though the son is willing able to work around the shop. The son passively accepts his immobilization, although he feels like he is on display, the disabled kid in the window, for all the customers to see. In the apartment, the parents also hang a mirror high, so that the son can see his head but not his body: he does not have to see an image of his disabled body until he goes out in the world and sees it in a store window. The son understands how his parents are protecting him, and he passively accedes to their behavior and actions. Before the store is shut down, the father buys his son a large supply of books and magazines. In the new apartment, the son reads and rereads the collection, not because he finds reading useful or enjoyable but out of habit: there is nothing else for him to do. Again, he passively accedes to the diminished life his parents have made for him. I should also say that the narrator is emotionally flat, distanced and alienated from what he observes. At some point, there is a falling out between husband and wife, who in the small apartment avoid talking with one another, and the wife will hardly be in the same room as her husband. The son simply observes the situation without intervening.
Neither parent do anything to help the son move out into the world. When the son finally goes out into the world because their funds are running out, the father attempts to help guide him, but he fails because he is losing his sight, and they get lost. The son goes back out into the neighborhood and finds a job doing piece work copyediting, which does not pay very well, so the family’s funds continue to diminish. In the meantime, the father goes blind; he never leaves the apartment, and his world closes down. He can no longer be his son’s protector. The mother has found a path out of the apartment and has struck up a friendship with the woman downstairs. She still sleeps in the apartment, and she cooks for her husband and son, their one meal a day, but she does not eat with them: otherwise, she is absent. She does, though, arrange for her son to have sex with the woman, which turns out as awkward, joyless, and unfulfilling as one might imagine. Awkward, joyless, and unfulfilling characterize the lives of the people in this novel, characterize the novel itself. The father dies, the mother remains distant, and the son sells whatever is in the apartment (books, furniture, etc.) to be able to buy a little food. There is no hope here, no future; the son only seems capable of giving into further reductions, diminishments of body, soul, and circumstance. There are no family, no friends, no social services, no social net. There is just an empty apartment.
Just a sad story. The book begins with some potential for improvement and empowerment, but then disability becomes the sign of utter disempowerment. In the end, it becomes a conventional sign of just how horrible life is in Beirut.
Daoud gives the character agency, subjectivity, a mind, a voice. He is the narrator and seems a fully-developed character rather than a one or two dimensional ableist construction. He is observant and articulate, and over the course of the novel he achieves greater agency and independence. There seems to be much potential here, but in the end "Penguin’s Song" is a sad tale of quiet desperation, hopelessness, and a narrow, reduced life.
The novel is set in Beirut during and after the civil war. The main characters are a family of three: father, mother, son. There is no extended family and no circle of friends or acquaintances. No one in the novel has a name. The father had a storefront in the Old City selling various and sundry goods. Because of the war, businesses are shut down and people are moved out of the Old City to newer, safer parts of Beirut. While other businessmen start new businesses in their new locations, the father does not. He seems to have been traumatized, and so they live on dwindling savings for the next 13+ years in their small claustrophobic apartment. From Daoud’s descriptions–shortened limbs, small hands, curved lower back–the son seems to have achondroplasia: the body is non-normative, but he is mobile.
The parents are initially very protective of their son. He goes to the father’s business, but the father only has him sit in a chair, even though the son is willing able to work around the shop. The son passively accepts his immobilization, although he feels like he is on display, the disabled kid in the window, for all the customers to see. In the apartment, the parents also hang a mirror high, so that the son can see his head but not his body: he does not have to see an image of his disabled body until he goes out in the world and sees it in a store window. The son understands how his parents are protecting him, and he passively accedes to their behavior and actions. Before the store is shut down, the father buys his son a large supply of books and magazines. In the new apartment, the son reads and rereads the collection, not because he finds reading useful or enjoyable but out of habit: there is nothing else for him to do. Again, he passively accedes to the diminished life his parents have made for him. I should also say that the narrator is emotionally flat, distanced and alienated from what he observes. At some point, there is a falling out between husband and wife, who in the small apartment avoid talking with one another, and the wife will hardly be in the same room as her husband. The son simply observes the situation without intervening.
Neither parent do anything to help the son move out into the world. When the son finally goes out into the world because their funds are running out, the father attempts to help guide him, but he fails because he is losing his sight, and they get lost. The son goes back out into the neighborhood and finds a job doing piece work copyediting, which does not pay very well, so the family’s funds continue to diminish. In the meantime, the father goes blind; he never leaves the apartment, and his world closes down. He can no longer be his son’s protector. The mother has found a path out of the apartment and has struck up a friendship with the woman downstairs. She still sleeps in the apartment, and she cooks for her husband and son, their one meal a day, but she does not eat with them: otherwise, she is absent. She does, though, arrange for her son to have sex with the woman, which turns out as awkward, joyless, and unfulfilling as one might imagine. Awkward, joyless, and unfulfilling characterize the lives of the people in this novel, characterize the novel itself. The father dies, the mother remains distant, and the son sells whatever is in the apartment (books, furniture, etc.) to be able to buy a little food. There is no hope here, no future; the son only seems capable of giving into further reductions, diminishments of body, soul, and circumstance. There are no family, no friends, no social services, no social net. There is just an empty apartment.
Just a sad story. The book begins with some potential for improvement and empowerment, but then disability becomes the sign of utter disempowerment. In the end, it becomes a conventional sign of just how horrible life is in Beirut.
December 12, 2020
Lugubrious novel of waiting waiting waiting as things fall apart, leave, get lost, die. Maybe an allegory - a disfigured country.
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September 11, 2015"The Penguin’s Song is an account of the Lebanese civil war, or rather of its devastating mental effects on those who were physically unharmed by it. "The Penguin” himself, a deformed young man, has fled with his parents from the war-torn city to an apartment overlooking Beirut. It is he whose observations chiefly create Daoud’s careful analysis of the psychological state consequent to displacement, a state of baffled meaninglessness, of hope apparently infinitely deferred, of unhealthy obsessions divorced from reality." -M. D. Allen, University of Wisconsin, Fox Valley
This book was reviewed in the September 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website:http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
This book was reviewed in the September 2015 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website:http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
December 24, 2014
رواية مُملَّة. كنتُ أُسابق الزَّمن لأنتهي منها. شدَّني لها في البداية فكرتها، حكاية شَّاب مُعاق جسديًا، ظننتُ أنَّني ساقرأ حالة واقعيّة مختلفة. وتركيبة إنسانيّة فريدة؛ ولكنَّني فوجئتُ بحالة مرضيّة غريبّة. الأم قوَّادة لابنها المُعاق، تُسهّلُ علاقة جنسيّة بينه وبين صديقتها الّتي تكبره بأعوام كثيرة، لم أفهم المغزى، ولم أُحاول فهمه.
تكرار مُمل لكلمات وجمل. واستدراك سيء للأحداث.
أجمل ما في الأمر، أنَّني
انتهيتُ من الرِّواية ولم أعرف بماذا كان الشَّاب مُعاقًا!
يُقال أن أسلوب الكاتب شعري؛ لكنَّني لم أقرأ ما يُثبت ذلك.
أعطيها نجمتان، ربَّما بسبب الصَّدمة حين وصلتُ إلى الزِّنا الّذي لم أتوقع حدوثه!
تكرار مُمل لكلمات وجمل. واستدراك سيء للأحداث.
أجمل ما في الأمر، أنَّني
انتهيتُ من الرِّواية ولم أعرف بماذا كان الشَّاب مُعاقًا!
يُقال أن أسلوب الكاتب شعري؛ لكنَّني لم أقرأ ما يُثبت ذلك.
أعطيها نجمتان، ربَّما بسبب الصَّدمة حين وصلتُ إلى الزِّنا الّذي لم أتوقع حدوثه!
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August 21, 2016The author is a good storyteller, and i enjoy reading his writing. The good: he has a way of making the sadness emanate from the page. good at evoking emotions. The bad: I was almost done with the book but it just got too disturbing. The voyeuristic part was already weird but the *apartment scene* was the last straw. Perhaps if he had a more...normal...book, i would actually finish it
February 18, 2016
رواية مملة .. لن اقرأ لحسن داوود مرة اخرى :) !!
April 29, 2017
رواية ممله جدا
بس الفكرة كويسة شاب معاق ذهنيا يصف حياتة اليومية , التعرف الاول علي الانثي ..
والدة وأمة
المحصلة انها رواية مملة
بس الفكرة كويسة شاب معاق ذهنيا يصف حياتة اليومية , التعرف الاول علي الانثي ..
والدة وأمة
المحصلة انها رواية مملة
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews