In this portrait of Palestinian life before the Nakba, a young man gains renown as a magician of a revolutionary sort—meanwhile evading the British colonialist forces who seek to destroy him and the resistance he represents.
Antonius creates vivid characters and mercilessly skewers British imperial life. But her greatest strength is lush descriptive prose. On every page there are jeweled sentences ... The plot is set in a vaguely framed story that takes place in Beirut many decades later, at the outset of the Lebanese civil war ... There is a gorgeous thread about a pet hawk, but it ultimately gets lost in the shuffle ... This device has rich potential, even if it is confusing and underdeveloped ... While Antonius’s novel falls short on the level of plotting, it remains a noteworthy literary achievement for its ability to re-create the world of Palestine on the eve of its destruction as it might have appeared to people living through it.
Riveting and cinematic and heavy with symbolism ... Brutal and shocking ... Breathtaking descriptions ... The plot of The Lord captures the highs and lows of human stupidity. Antonius’s characters are as hopeless as they are familiar to today’s readers. But her settings do something more. They root into the soil. They expose ancient forms of coexistence. They reclaim the possibility of beauty, translatable in all directions.
Vivid ... Antonius’s eye is as keen as her wit ... Antonius’s Challis is an entirely believable monster, but she is by no means out to tar all her British characters. Those like Miss Alice and the journalist Egerton...are presented with a great deal of nuance, respect, and affection ... The voice of Antonius in The Lord is unique. It ranges from the highly literary to the urgently informative to wry asides imbued with feminist critique. At times the voice is sarcastically knowing; at others forthright and furious; it is frequently funny ... What could be more apposite to Antonius’s persona and politics than the style of this novel that breaks away from standard forms, subverting expectations and creating a new living form? ... An act of the literary resurrection of an entire nation. With her pen, Antonius rebuilds villages and cities ... She calls out injustice, no matter who is behind it, whether Palestinian informants, British torturers, or chauvinist boyfriends. She shows us the corrosive nature of colonial rule and military oppression on the intricate civilization of Palestine and she demands change.
