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ʻAntar and ʻAbla: A Bedouin romance
Fiction.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published January 26, 1978
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November 2, 2015
First off, I don't know why this is called Antar &Amp; Abla: A Bedouin Romance. It is called Antar and Abla A Bedouin Romance. But this is how it was listed on goodreads.
This is a short retelling of the very long Antar story, written originally in Arabic. As part of her sources for this English version the author uses the 19th Century translation by Terrick Hamilton. Despite some reservations, I liked that translation (although I read a shortened version of it.) I was hoping in this version that I might learn more tales that make up this great corpus. There are some details here that I did not know before, but I walked away not quite satisfied. The constant raiding that happens throughout the story gets tiresome. Raiding was a fact of life in the Arab world a long time ago and this book makes you REALLY aware of it. There are raids upon raids upon raids. There are raiders getting raided by other raiders. There are so many people who are taken captive during these raids until Antar comes to the rescue. His love Abla is taken more than once herself, until she is rescued by you know who. Between who is captured and recaptured, who is doing the capturing, and who is getting really pissed by all this and leading to friends turning into foes, I found I had to reread some passages.
How much this might be smoothed over by a skilled translator is something I don't know.
Another little issue I had was that in Hamilton's intro to his translation he says that the jinn make an appearance in some stories, but I did not find any examples in the version I read. I was hoping I would find some here, but alas, there aren't any.
Richmond even leaves out the tale of Antar's death, which surprised me because it is a riveting story.
Despite all of my bitching I applaud Richmond for trying to give us a readable English version of the Antar epic that is also of reasonable length. There are many versions in English of The Arabian Nights, but there is little in the way of this equally respected story that is accessible to English readers.
One more thing I liked about this version is that the author includes some of the poetry that is found among the prose of the original. The poems also feel less intrusive to the narrative, which was a problem I had with the Hamilton translation, although I don't know which is the way it supposed to be in the original Arabic.
This is a short retelling of the very long Antar story, written originally in Arabic. As part of her sources for this English version the author uses the 19th Century translation by Terrick Hamilton. Despite some reservations, I liked that translation (although I read a shortened version of it.) I was hoping in this version that I might learn more tales that make up this great corpus. There are some details here that I did not know before, but I walked away not quite satisfied. The constant raiding that happens throughout the story gets tiresome. Raiding was a fact of life in the Arab world a long time ago and this book makes you REALLY aware of it. There are raids upon raids upon raids. There are raiders getting raided by other raiders. There are so many people who are taken captive during these raids until Antar comes to the rescue. His love Abla is taken more than once herself, until she is rescued by you know who. Between who is captured and recaptured, who is doing the capturing, and who is getting really pissed by all this and leading to friends turning into foes, I found I had to reread some passages.
How much this might be smoothed over by a skilled translator is something I don't know.
Another little issue I had was that in Hamilton's intro to his translation he says that the jinn make an appearance in some stories, but I did not find any examples in the version I read. I was hoping I would find some here, but alas, there aren't any.
Richmond even leaves out the tale of Antar's death, which surprised me because it is a riveting story.
Despite all of my bitching I applaud Richmond for trying to give us a readable English version of the Antar epic that is also of reasonable length. There are many versions in English of The Arabian Nights, but there is little in the way of this equally respected story that is accessible to English readers.
One more thing I liked about this version is that the author includes some of the poetry that is found among the prose of the original. The poems also feel less intrusive to the narrative, which was a problem I had with the Hamilton translation, although I don't know which is the way it supposed to be in the original Arabic.
Displaying 1 of 1 review