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Inspirational life of Tawfiq Zayyad, poet, activist and politician
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Tawfiq Zayyad
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The Optimist: A Social Biography of Tawfiq Zayyad
by Tamir Sorek
(Stanford University Press, £20.99)
THIS is an unusual biography of Tawfiq Zayyad, not least because it is about a Palestinian communist and is written by a US-based, Jewish-Israeli social scientist.
The renowned Palestinian poet and activist was a leading member of the Israeli Communist Party for over four decades and was elected mayor of Nazareth before becoming a member of the Israeli Knesset, serving for 18 years. He died in 1994 at the age of 85.
The book's author Tamir Sorek openly questions his right as an Israeli Jew and non-communist to write such a biography. But his admiration and respect for Zayyad, even though he never met him, is unquestionable and he was given full access to Zayyad’s family and comrades and exhaustively mined many archival sources.
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