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Samir Naqqash (1938-2004) was born in Baghdad and migrated to Israel in 1951. This article describes his divided soul, his attempts to adapt to a new homeland and his inability to develop a sense of belonging to Israeli society. The study is based on two short stories, 'Willow Night', which describes the collapse of an old world and the loss of Jewish values, and 'Tantal', a story of childhood. A major theme in Naqqash's writings is the search for identity, a direct result of the author's inability to detach himself from his previous identity as an Iraqi Jew. This theme is intimately connected to one of the most important motifs in his stories, rootlessness. The author feels torn from a previous perfect world, now lost - a world which he now adores and remembers with sentimental yearning. In his stories he depicts a number of characters whose emigration to Israel induced a profound shock in them, which eventually led to their mental and physical downfall. Reprinted by permission of Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.

Samir Naqqash (1938-2004) was born in Baghdad and migrated to Israel in 1951. This article describes his divided soul, his attempts to adapt to a new homeland and his inability to develop a sense of belonging to Israeli society. The study is based on two short stories, 'Willow Night', which describes the collapse of an old world and the loss of Jewish values, and 'Tantal', a story of childhood. A major theme in Naqqash's writings is the search for identity, a direct result of the author's inability to detach himself from his previous identity as an Iraqi Jew. This theme is intimately connected to one of the most important motifs in his stories, rootlessness. The author feels torn from a previous perfect world, now lost - a world which he now adores and remembers with sentimental yearning. In his stories he depicts a number of characters whose emigration to Israel induced a profound shock in them, which eventually led to their mental and physical downfall.

Arabic Israeli writer Samir Naqqash believes that his vivid memories of growing up in Iraq are indicative of his ties to Iraq and Arabic. He continues to write in Arabic, the language of his childhood, because he thinks it inauthentic to switch to a language learnt later in life. He aims to capture the essential human experience of pain in his writings and sees language as a tool to capture this universal emotion. He lists Naguib Mahfouz, Jean Paul Sartre and Alain Robbe-Grillet among writers he admires.

While achieving wide-ranging acclaim in the Arab world, particularly among the Iraqi exile community, [Samir Naqqash] was little known in Israel; only one of his 13 works was translated into Hebrew.

Naqqash died Tuesday at his home in the city of Petah Tikvah. While achieving wide-ranging acclaim in the Arab world and particularly among the Iraqi exile community, Naqqash was little known in Israel, with only one of his 13 works translated into Hebrew. Naqqash never fully settled in Israel and lived and traveled in Turkey, India and Iran for a period. The last four years of his life were spent in Manchester, England, where he worked with the Iraqi exile community. He had returned to his home in Israel just weeks before his death, [Shmuel Moreh] said.

Queen Susan, 63, the wife of the self-proclaimed heir to Albania's throne, Saturday in Tirana, Albania, of lung cancer. Born in 1941 in Australia as Susan Cullen-Ward, she married Leka Zog, the only son of the late King Ahmet Zog, in 1975. The royal family, which lived in exile after fleeing Albania in 1939 when Italy's fascist regime occupied the country, returned in June 2002 after 74 members of parliament invited it back. The king died in Paris in 1961. Albania's communist rulers abolished the monarchy in 1946, but even in exile, the royal family insisted that Leka Zog -- who calls himself King Leka Zog I and called Susan his queen -- was Albania's legitimate ruler.

In an interview, writer Samir Naqqash discusses his early imprisonment for crossing the Lebanese border, his opposition to partisan writing and the relation of style, language and the complexity of his characters evident in his works.