Leon Uris - Haddsch

Okay, so I just finished this book. And it was.
I don't know. 
It took me like two months to finish it which is a horribly long time for some 570 pages and I had to read the second "Monster High" in between because it was just too... depressing and boring sometimes. 
The book is about the life of an Arabian family in Palestine during the 1920s to 1960ies, it was written in 1984. 
It covers a lot of historical and political information about the "Nahost-Konflikt", how it started, how the British guys behaved during it (badly. Oh so very badly), how the war tortured the poor and weak and powerless who don't really care who is there to rule them. 
Combined are the experiences of one specific Arabic boy whose father is a famous and powerful leader among the Palestine people who goes from "stupid, chauvinistic dimwit" over "at least he is capable of learning" to "resigned old man who fought for everything and won nothing". Oh and he kills his daughter because she defies him after 20 years of being the typical Arabic daughter.
What this book taught me: Arabian people usually the men are cruel, lazy, complain a lot, are only interested in sex and killing their next kin, would never show any kind of compassion for anyone and are responsible for their own misery.
Yeah, awesome moral, don't you think?
This book shoves every cliché about Arabian men and women into one family only and plays them totally straight. 80% of this book are about sex or hatred, how the Koran is forbidding the first and fueling the second, how the first one drives everyone crazy (the final breakdown resulting in his death for the main character is - after he fought against whole nations single handedly, lost and overcame this mindcrushing loss - that his daughter isn't a virgin anymore) and how the second one is the only driving force for the Arabian people because they are in no way zelaous or want to do anything for their "country". 
Whereas the Jewish people are downright saints and although I can understand that to a degree (he only describes extraordinate people like generals and very open-minded Jews) it's just incredible how biased this book is.  Arabs are bad, Jews are good and although the author tries to explain why the Arabian people are like that - it just doesn't come off as critical enough: he repeats himself over and over again, (the point about sex and hatred) and sometimes, he just feasts on cruelty (rape, murder, massacres) conveying a message for the maybe not so educated and well-read reader (which in all arrogance, I claim to be, because I researched about Middle East conflict after  I finished that book) that Palestine, Saudi-Arabie, Egypt and all the other nations are cruel places where no one wants to live and no one should ever desire to go there. Especially women come off as pitiful people - which is also understandable to a degree because being a woman in hardline conservative muslim families can be incredibly hard. But still, it's just too much sometimes. 

All in all, I surely wouldn't reccomend this book to anyone who wants a well thought through look on the developments in the Middle East but maybe you should read it and form an opinion yourself - maybe I was too stupid to see the more subtle tunes in this book. 
Imho, it was a lenghty, sometimes shitty and paianful read, occasionally better because of the 1001-night-esque descriptions of wealth, but that was it. 

Blahblah, I'm off to bed now. Maybe with a Monster High book. 

(no subject)

Okay, das ist jetzt mal ganz kurz peinlich, aber: 

ich hab ja ab und zu diese Serie "Alles, was zählt" (ja, steinigt mich) geschaut, wegen des schwulen Eislaufpaares. 

Und jetzt las ich grad das hier und ich war kurzzeitig sehr geschockt und unheimlich traurig und bähhh, das ist doch gemein. ;_;
Naja, jetzt werd ich wohl die Autogrammkarten, die pinku mir besorgt hat, ganz fest an meine Brust pressen und ein Tränchen vergießen. BUHUUUUUUUUUU. ;_;