The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
Emile Habiby
A comic novel about a Palestinian informer for the new Israeli state — the funniest and most disquieting account of what it was to remain inside Israel after 1948.
Saeed writes from outer space, where he has escaped with the help of an extraterrestrial, to explain how he got there. What he explains is a life spent as an informer for the state that had just been built over his own country: a luckless, gullible, frightened man who tries to be the very best collaborator he can and fails at that too. He is a victim more than a villain, and the joke keeps turning back on the reader.
“Pessoptimist” is the translators’ English for a word Habiby had to invent — al-mutashāʼil, a pessimist and an optimist fused into one, because no existing word would hold the condition he was describing. The Arabic original, الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل, appeared in 1974 and did what no political tract had managed: it made the position of the Palestinians who stayed inside Israel — citizens of a state that regarded them as a problem, cut off from the rest of their people — legible from the inside, and it did it in comedy.
Habiby knew the material from the inside too. The book runs on an old and reliable engine, the one Voltaire and Swift built: an innocent narrator, a world that is absurd, and an author who never once tells you what to think. Anton Shammas’s Hebrew translation carried it to Israeli readers, and a stage version ran for a decade.
About the author
Emile Habiby was born in Haifa in 1922 and died in Nazareth in 1996. A journalist, novelist and playwright, he was among the best-known Palestinian writers inside Israel and sat in the Knesset. In 1990 the PLO awarded him its Order of Jerusalem for Culture, Arts and Literature; in 1992 he accepted the Israel Prize. His work has been translated into Hebrew, French and German.
Details
- Arabic original, الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي النحس المتشائل, published 1974
- English translation by Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick
- Current edition: Interlink Books, 2024 — 169 pages, ISBN 9781623717025
- Earlier Interlink edition, 2002 — ISBN 9781566564151
- Award dates from Emile Habibi (Q721746) — Wikidata
Where to find it
- In print from Interlink Publishing, a Palestinian-owned independent press in Massachusetts.
- The 2002 edition is borrowable free through the Internet Archive’s lending library: The Secret Life of Saeed.
Connected in the archive
21 connected records21 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
named in this record — 3 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Haifaحيفا
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Emile Habiby was born in Haifa in 1922 and died in Nazareth in 1996.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1990 the PLO awarded him its Order of Jerusalem for Culture, Arts and Literature; in 1992 he accepted the Israel Prize.
- Nazarethالناصرة
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Emile Habiby was born in Haifa in 1922 and died in Nazareth in 1996.
on a related subject — 18 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "Haifa", "Palestinians in Israel".
- Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Haifa".
- Apeirogon
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "novel".
- Elias Sanbarإلياس صنبر
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Haifa".
- Gate of the Sun
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "novel".
- Ghassan Kanafani: A Conversation Between the Sword and the Neck
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "resistance literature".
- and 12 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/library/the-secret-life-of-saeed/.- MLA
“The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist.” Library, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/library/the-secret-life-of-saeed/. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-the-secret-life-of-saeed, title = {The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/library/the-secret-life-of-saeed/}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }