Prince of the Shadow: Engineer on the Road

"Prince of the Shadow: Engineer on the Road" by Abdullah Barghouti is a novel written within the confines of Israeli detention cells. The narrative begins as it responds to a question from the author's daughter, Tala, who witnessed her father's arrest in 2003. In a letter, she asks her father, "Who are you? And why are you?" She inquires about the father who left her in the car at the moment of his arrest and has since been incarcerated in Israeli prisons for 21 years. The story recounts his enduring spirit against his jailers and the decade spent in solitary confinement, detailing his life story and resistance against the occupation. Abdullah Barghouti holds the record for the longest sentence in the history of Israeli jurisprudence, having been sentenced to 67 life terms plus 5,200 years—a sentence naturally intriguing to anyone wishing to understand the man subjected to such unprecedented punishment. "Prince of the Shadow," now translated into English for the first time, offers a chance to get closer to this man through a book resembling an autobiography, or perhaps a form of it. This biography allows us to journey through a lengthy saga with an exceptional hero in every sense of struggle and humanity. A hero that, if he belonged to any nation that honors its heroes, would have his true-life heroism turned into the greatest of films, for here the heroism is real, not fictitious.