Written in 2014 and nominated this year for the International Booker Prize, Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem’s novel is part of the ever-growing body of Palestinian literature, which seeks to preserve the memory and stories of a people whose very existence is constantly threatened by displacement, targeted violence, and cultural and civilizational erasure.
Authors such as Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish, Randa Jarrar, Suzan Abulhawa, and others have long grappled with themes of exile, identity, conflict, and the ongoing struggle to preserve the collective dignity of a people who are today being exterminated in the most inhumane manner. And more recently, Hadaksi, Mazen Maarouf, and certainly many others.
Their works explore the deeply rooted and often painful bond with the homeland and the struggle for self-determination and freedom… In the same vein, Azem, through personal and collective memory, reveals how storytelling itself becomes an act of resistance, and she achieves this through the evocative depiction of an imaginary scenario, since in her novel, all Palestinians suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, and all that remains is their historical and cultural presence, which persists…