‘So dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!’: writing Palestinian history in a magical realist key

ABSTRACT

This article reflects on writing a history book in the style of a magical realist novel. The book, The Lives and Deaths of Jubrail Dabdoub, employs classic techniques from magical realist fiction to narrate the transformation of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem in the 19^th century. In this article, I describe the process of writing the book, using this as an entry-point into a wider discussion on how historians can productively engage with literary form and genre. Drawing on fictional writing in Spanish, Arabic and English, the article argues magical realist prose is particularly well suited to capturing a sense of the fantastical, the uncanny and the absurd – areas of historical experience usually neglected in academic writing. I discuss how I experimented with specific techniques to tap into Bethlehem’s arresting, often bizarre encounters with global capitalism in the 19^th century, as well as explore my own relationship to this history as a British historian writing about Palestine.

KEYWORDS:

• Historiography
• magical realism
• Palestine
• literary genre
• reflexivity
• Creative non-fiction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gerardo Serra for his inspirational support and input in writing this paper. I would also like to thank Jonathan Walker and the anonymous reviewers at Rethinking History for their valuable comments on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jacob Norris

Jacob Norris is Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of Sussex and Co-Director of the Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS). His work has mostly focused on Palestine and its connections to other areas of global south history.