Yumna Kassab's impressionistic novel Politica considers moral dilemmas and harsh choices in a time of war
- Written by Ned Curthoys, Senior Lecturer in English and Literary Studies, The University of Western Australia
Politica is the fourth novel by Yumna Kassab, who has made a significant impact on the Australian literary scene since the publication of her debut novel The House of Youssef in 2019.
Politica is written in Kassab’s now signature polyphonic style. A variety of abruptly introduced characters (“Um Kareem came here with tears in her eyes”) ponder their possibilities, drift in and out of relationships, and seek personal solace in the midst of a prolonged and violent conflict.
Set in a small community, the novel is sparsely written, with minimal description of character, place or historical moment. It does not let readers anchor themselves in an evolving narrative arc. Instead, it asks them to immerse themselves in aperçus of a bewildered and suffering community.
In this unnamed town or village, the past is ever present, and the present is barely tolerable in the absence of a hopeful future.
Review: Politica – Yumna Kassab (Ultimo Press)
Yumna Kassab.
Tiger Webb/Giramondo Publishing
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Maks Sipowicz has written about Kassab’s “moral project”. In Politica, we can recognise a desire to humanise the protagonists of Middle Eastern conflicts. This is of crucial importance when Arab and Muslim political movements, including that of the Palestinians, are relentlessly delegitimised and dehumanised.
Politica wants to show what a resistance movement might look like from the side of the oppressed. The novel questions the total warfare the West now excuses as a drive for security. Indeed, it is hard not to think of Gaza when Kassab names a chapter “Exile no right of return” or when an innocent child beseeches
I thought you said they wouldn’t touch the ruins. My family were sheltering there.
Yet there is always a danger that a novel seeking to say something about politics will begin to moralise. The tendency becomes more prevalent in the second half of Politica. A war that began with noble ideals comes to resemble a plague laying waste to all who experience it. The novel’s early interest in difficult choices and humane conduct gives way to generalities about the futility and hypocrisy of politics:
Politics is all words. Remember, the truth is somewhere else.
In the third section, the conventional Gothic trope of a well that preserves the memories of the dead and witnesses the confessions of the living feels somewhat hackneyed:
There is a presence here. She feels it close to the well.
Telling begins to predominate over showing, as sententious nostrums badger the reader:
There may be no witness in the living but the record is always kept. The weight of history is layers, and it does not disappear, no matter how oblivious is humanity.
A once energetic character called Salma, now mature and disappointed, sits vigilantly facing a doorway as a rather heavy-handed signifier of trauma, anxiety and compulsion.
I will admit that I found myself questioning the continuing narrative interest of a community at a standstill. I wanted to understand the cause of the distress and fatigue of characters who are briefly introduced. Is it the corrupt neo-colonial state, the occupying forces, the legacy of Euro-American hegemony?
I think Politica bears comparison with the literary tradition of “civic realism” identified by Timothy Brennan, which wants its readers to recognise and then oppose a bad reality. That recognition can also be achieved through allegory and magic-realism. Mohsin Hamid’s intricate fable Exit West (2017), about migration as a human right, has demonstrated the vitality of indirect narrative techniques.
Yet Politica seems nervous about the enormity of contemporary geopolitics. It prefers bathos in a minor key to the ambitious scope of historical fiction, now an abundant postcolonial genre.
To its credit, Kassab’s novel retains a sense that the political can generate realignments of gender roles, and that small players and working people can become prophetic voices. But it has little to say about the promise of politics, which is also about a much needed transformation in the cause of justice and the human efforts needed to achieve it.
Authors: Ned Curthoys, Senior Lecturer in English and Literary Studies, The University of Western Australia 
