Irony of Anton Shammas
Anton Shammas is a walking, talking, living, and breathing set of contradictions. His lineage, his faith, his citizenship, even where they lived as a family violated conventions and defied all sorts of stereotypes. His family was Arabic and yet they were Christian rather than Muslim. They were Arabs but they lived in Israel. Culturally and linguistically he and his family didn’t identify with the Palestinians; all things considered they were more Jewish than anything else.
Irony of Michael Abyad
Michael Abyad is written to be the long lost cousin of Anton the narrator. However it is revealed later on that he is more than just a relative displaced by time and circumstance. Michael Abyad is revealed to be a doppelgänger of Anton the narrator, another Anton so to speak. His circumstances, his colorful and convoluted family history, even his profession, all of it mirrors of various aspects of his life. They mirror his life so closely in fact that one later on starts to think “which ‘Anton’ is actually telling the story?”
Irony of Laylah Khoury
The supposed meeting with Laylah to get information about Michael Abyad never actually happened. The story was just that, a story, a products of Anton the narrator’s fertile imagination. The reason for Anton’s literary bait-and-switch routine is never explained but it can be theorized that perhaps in his desire to get answers or to get closure for what he feels to be a missing facet of his identity he allows his imagination to just run wild and “fill in the blanks.” Twists like this are featured more frequently as the story progresses and given the highly fluid nature of the novel’s narrative this shouldn’t come as any great surprise.
Irony of the Narrator
Who is the real narrator? Was it Anton Shammas or was it Michael Abyad? These questions begin to surface once the two “Antons” manage to meet up as the reader begins to realize that Michael is a doppelgänger presence in the narrative. The question of who is actually narrating the story also comes to mind as it would seem that the whole narrative is in fact one huge work of fiction woven from various sorts of literary forms. The question remains unanswered however as to who, whether Anton or Michael, is the one dreaming up the whole story and narrating it.
Irony of the Truth
The whole novel is a tightly woven amalgam of personal memoir, fiction, and myth; as such the “truth” is a highly fluid and often highly questionable concept. This is especially true with regards to recollections of Anton the narrator’s past. Many of his memories are either mythologized to the point of fantasy or altogether fabricated for reasons never clearly explained. One thing is certain though, because of the hybrid nature of the story, the truth---very possibly even truths---are never truly quite as they seem at first blush.
