The latest addition to my website is Hala Alyan‘s Salt Houses. This novel tells the story of an extended Palestinian family, from when they are driven out of Nablus (in 1967), having been previously driven out of Jaffa. Some of them go to Kuwait, where they will also be driven out, by Saddam Hussein’s invasion … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Susan Albulhawa ‘s Scar of David (later:Mornings in Jenin). In this novel we follow an extended Palestinian family from the British mandate in the 1940s up to the early 2000s. Our main character is Amal, whom we first meet with an Israeli pressing a gun against her temple. … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sahar Khalifeh‘s رواية (Wild Thorns). Usama has been working in the Gulf states but has lost his job and is now returning home to the West Bank, nominally to get another job but also, possibly, to carry out a terrorist attack. He is horrified by what he finds … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ghassan Zaqtan‘s حيث اختفى الطائر : رواية (Where the Bird Disappeared). This is the second book in a loose trilogy. I have already read and reviewed the first one and the third one. This is short, effectively a novella. We follow two boys, Yahya and Zakariyya in a … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Anton Shammas‘ ערבסקות, (Arabesques). This is an autobiographical novel (the narrator is called Anton Shammas) which, interestingly enough was written in Hebrew, though it is very much about the Palestinian experience. Shammas tells us the convoluted story of his family in the Palestinian village of Fassuta, about what … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ibrahim Nasrallah ‘s زمن الخيول البيضاء (Time of White Horses). This is a long novel, actually three related novels in a row, telling of the fate of a Palestinian village, Hadiya (which means peaceful) and its inhabitants from the late nineteenth century and the fading of the Ottoman … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jabra Ibrahim Jabra‘s البحث البحث عن وليد مسعودد (In Search of Walid Masoud). Walid Masoiud is a Palestinian who fought for Palestine after the Nakba but has since moved ro Baghdad, where he has become a banker, a womaniser and an author, though still a supporter of the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yahya Yakhlif‘s رة وراء الريح، (A Lake Beyond the Wind). The novel is set in Samakh in 1948. Samakh had been an important stop on the Jezreel Valley railway and Hejaz railway but after the events of this novel became depopulated. As we know from the link, the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Liana Badr‘s بوصلة من أجل عباد الشمس (Compass of the Sunflower). This was Badr’s first novel and we follow the story of a young Palestinian woman, Jinan, as various events – the 1967 war, Black September, the 1970 war and the Lebanese Civil War – which casue her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Laila al-Atrash‘s :مرأة للفصول الخمسة، (A Woman of Five Seasons). The novel is set in Barquais, a fictitious country, clearly based on one of the Gulf states (to which many Palestinians emigrated after the Nakba). There is no mention in the text of any real Arab country, including … Read more