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Purposefully imitating Voltaire’s classic Candide, another dark comedy which derives itshumour from life’s tragedies, Habiby’s The Secret of Saeed the Pessoptimist is a classic of Arabliterature. The story of Saeed, a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, is a story of factand fantasy, tragedy and comedy. At once a comic hero and luckless fool, his life is full of terror,aggression, resistence and heroism. As an informer for the Zionist state, Saeed’s stupidity,candour and cowardice make him more the victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomicepisodes, blundering from disaster to disaster, he is slowly transformed from gullible collaboratorinto a Palestinian intent on survival. The novel, informed by the author’s own experience inIsraeli politics, is both biting and funny.