The situation in Palestine fills me with despair, but I’m trying to overcome that and act. A ceasefire needs to happen, and I’ve been advocating for that with the small tools at my disposal, both on social media and in person. I’ve talked a lot about how the Israeli government needs to stop attacking the Gaza strip – these actions cause massive indiscriminate harm to every single inhabitant of the Gaza strip and will not bring the people taken hostage back either. (Yes, I care about them. War crimes cannot be the answer.)
I’ve been saying a lot on social media, and for more I refer you there, but I also wanted to do something that is specific to book blogging, because many of you follow me for that.
I enjoy reading Palestinian literature, so here are 25 books I thought were awesome and that I think you should read. I started poking at this list a while ago, but in the current situation I really wanted to prioritize & boost book lists made by Palestinians first and foremost, so I took a while to finalize & post it (because I am not Palestinian). If you like speculative fiction, Sonia Sulaiman’s comprehensive list is a great place to start, and she also has a recommendations thread of various other media too. You can also do the #ReadPalestinianSpecFic reading event, I participated in the previous one and would warmly recommend it.
My recommendations are mostly anthologies, poetry and speculative fiction, because that’s what I read most frequently 🙂 but there will be a bit of everything, children’s books, graphic novels, nonfiction. All Palestinian authors only; I’ve seen some book lists of “Palestinian books” circulating (generally not made by Palestinians) where several of the authors weren’t actually Palestinian.
You’ve seen many of the below recommendations by this point if you’ve been following my book reviews, but I think now it is time for a recap! There are also two new titles I read last month and haven’t had a chance to talk about yet. One of them just won an award yesterday, as you’ll find out below.
But before that…
Here are some actions you can take, right now:
* Call your representatives and ask them to advocate for a ceasefire (especially if you are in the US, because this is actively proposed in the US right now & the US has a large military presence in the area). Do any other actions that promote a ceasefire – Rasha Abdulhadi had a Twitter thread. Many Palestinians have repeatedly expressed that this is their #1 need, over humanitarian aid and donations – e.g., see this from Malaka Shwaikh.
* After you’ve done that, you can still donate to charity. Right now very little aid is allowed into the strip by the Israeli government, but G-d willing that will change. I suggest the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. They are a longtime charity with a lot of experience providing medical services in Gaza. Your donations are tax deductible in the US.
* Then of course the bookish things: Buy books. Talk about books. Follow the authors on social media!
* Get your library to buy books! Free to you and other patrons will also benefit. Many libraries allow patrons to place a few requests each month, there is often a form for this on the library website. Bonus: if you keep it up for a few months, eventually your library might also order Palestinian books you didn’t request – because other patrons will in fact read these books and keep them circulating. There is much more of a demand for Palestinian books among readers than what most librarians assume.
I added Bookshop.org affiliate links, and if my affiliate payment reaches the payout threshold, I’ll donate it to PCRF too.
Books are in no particular order, except I let the list flow from one to the other as the books reminded me of each other. I’m going to do this without author repeats, but if you liked a book, please seek out other works from its author!
1. The Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Atef Abu Saif, many translators (Comma Press)
Possibly the most timely right now, one of the volumes in the great Comma Press Cities series. Has some SFF too, but mostly realistic fiction. A great selection that I enjoyed a lot; also a slim volume, so you can read it right now! While we’re here, I also recommend…
2. The Book of Ramallah: A City in Short Fiction, edited by Maya Abu al-Hayat, many translators (Comma Press)
Media attention is less focused on the West Bank right now (even though there are settler attacks ongoing, please do not miss that), but you can still read this book & pair it with The Book of Gaza. This has a wonderful story about a talking horse, you’ll have to read it to see it 🙂 The editor is also a poet, I strongly recommend You Can Be the Last Leaf.
3. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh (Scribner)
Nonfiction! Raja Shehadeh, a lawyer and one of the founders of al-Haq, a legal NGO focused on fighting for Palestinian rights in Israeli courts, talks about… walking in nature in Palestine and everything the landscape reminds him of (including said legal cases, but everything really). Intimate, thoughful, a learning experience, just a very rich book in general.
4. Birthright by George Abraham (Button Poetry)
Awesome, formally experimental, thematically rich, queer poetry. Some of the highest points of this volume are very explicitly speculative, so if you are on the lookout for speculative poetry, please don’t miss (though I would like to bring up Rasha Abdulhadi’s point that all Palestinian literature is speculative).
5. who is owed springtime by Rasha Abdulhadi (Neon Hemlock)
I blurbed this poetry chapbook (which has been an honor!). A really striking collection, I don’t think it has wider distribution, but you can order it directly from the publisher. The website also has a free pdf of their previous microchapbook Shell Houses. You can read this right now!
6. Palestine+100: Stories from a Century After the Nakba edited by Basma Ghalayini (Comma Press / Deep Vellum)
This is one of the best speculative anthologies in recent years as far as I’m concerned, not just regionally, but overall. Each story is set in 2048 and each of them is very different, but very memorable. The concept ties it together and the quality is just extremely high.
7. Trees for the Absentees by Ahlam Bsharat, translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (Neem Tree Press)
A gentle time travel-ish fantasy novella about life & death, and where the past and the present interface. New Adult, with the protagonist a young university student trying to find her way in occupied Nablus. I really liked this one and I feel it needs more appreciation.
8. Muneera and the Moon: Stories Inspired By Palestinian Folklore by Sonia Sulaiman (Self-published)
A slim volume of folklore-inspired fantasy (and a bit of science fiction 🙂 ) by a Palestinian Canadian author, these stories have wonderful ambience, and often queer themes – including asexual themes too! Keep an eye on Sonia’s socials – in addition to her tireless work uplifting other Palestinian creators, she sometimes reprints her stories online too.
9. Where Black Stars Rise by Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger (Tor Nightfire)
I just read this two weeks ago, and yesterday it won an Ignyte award! A cosmic horror graphic novel, inspired by and subverting The King in Yellow. The protagonist is a very newbie therapist and a Lebanese diasporic person in New York… Her first patient seems haunted by a mysterious figure, who might end up more real than expected. This book doesn’t go to the places mental-illness narratives in horror usually go. Nadia Shammas is also a great editor, I was a kickstarter backer of her anthology Corpus: A Comic Anthology of Bodily Ailments and it’s one of my favorite comics anthologies. I don’t know where copies can be currently bought, or I’d link that too.
10. Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua, translated by Mitch Ginsburg (Grove)
Sayed Kashua writes in Hebrew and primarily about Palestinian citizens of Israel. It was hard to figure out which of his books to recommend, but I chose this one, because it returns to the themes in some of his earlier books but complicates them. This novel is about what seems like a straightforward case of spousal betrayal in Jerusalem, but everything gets messy very fast as the protagonist decides to investigate exactly who might be his wife’s secret lover.
11. The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist by Emile Habiby, translated by Salma K Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick (Interlink Books)
A modern classic, probably the first Palestinian speculative novel. Saeed the Pessoptimist bumbles through history in the making, and we get to witness tragedy told as biting satire. It’s like Candide but you know, better.
12. Quasar by Jamil Nasir (Bantam Spectra)
And this is probably the first Palestinian American speculative novel; a bit newer. I think it’s out of print, at least I’m not finding it on Bookshop.org. A cyberpunk-magic-adventure-hallucinatory romp, and also simultaneously a really effective portrayal of powerlessness. This book does so many interesting things, it should be better known.
13. Dancing on the Tarmac by Tarik Dobbs (Yemassee)
This is a stunning poetry chapbook – the bad news is that I think it is out of print, the good news is that it probably went out of print because these poems are going to be included in Dobbs’ not one but TWO upcoming debut collections. A lot of intriguing visual poetry in here too, where the form and the function really create a whole.
14. Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid (World Poetry Books)
Poetry, but really different from the previous – and also a bilingual edition, with the original French and also the English translation side by side. I speak just enough French to immensely appreciate having both 🙂 These poems have a starkness to them that reminds me of El Kazovsky’s paintings.
15. A fájdalom kövei by Anwar Hamed (h21 Hungarus)
This is my special feature for my Hungarian readers! A novel by a Palestinian author written in Hungarian, it takes a look at a Palestinian man accompanying Hungarian Jewish anti-occupation activists to his home village. Nothing goes as planned. This is one of my favorite Palestinian books and I hope that one day it can be translated to English too – the author now writes short fiction in English and lives in London, he had a story in Palestine+100 too.
16. Nayra and the Djinn by Iasmin Omar Ata (Viking Books for Young Readers)
Something very different, a middle grade fantasy graphic novel! I also read this one recently, so I haven’t had a chance to talk about it much yet. Nayra, a Muslim girl in America, is bullied in school and everything seems terrible – but then she happens upon a djinn. Except the djinn is also struggling and everything seems terrible for them too. The story happens all throughout Ramadan and I thought that was a great framing. Also this book has much on the difficulties of friendship, and not just with the djinn 🙂
17. How the Water Holds Me by Tariq Luthun (Bull City Press)
Poetry! Another complete surprise recently, I found it in a local bookstore and opened it to a poem referencing Sailor Moon. This is a great, in-depth exploration of Palestinian American masculinities and yes, also including Sailor Moon.
18.Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (Greenwillow Books)
One of America’s favorite poets for all ages, Naomi Shihab Nye also happens to be Palestinian 🙂 I could recommend anything by her, really, but this is a great selection published recently, in a book that’s also beautiful as an object. Read it with your kids, your parents, everyone around you. Then you can pick up her many other collections and see in which contexts each poem originally appeared.
19. In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Sinan Antoon (Archipelago Books)
Another of the Palestinian poetry greats of all time, I cannot miss Mahmoud Darwish. This is a volume of amazing prose poetry that traces just an immense range of space and time, history, present and future.
20. The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon (Syracuse University Press)
A very different also book translated by the Iraqi author Sinan Antoon. This is a speculative novel that explores what would happen if Palestinians just vanished one day. Has an absolutely chilling final scene that’s at the same time very true to life. I read this book when it came out and I wished for more Palestinian SFF in English – my wish came true, but I continue wishing it still. 🙂
21. Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy Al-Asheq, translated by Isis Nusair (Seagull Books / New Arab List)
Prose poetry / unclassifiables (as per the author). The author is a Palestinian refugee from Syria who is a refugee also from Syria to Germany. He writes about these experiences in very striking ways, this is a very difficult read emotionally, but very much worth it.
22. Adrenalin by Ghayath Almadhoun, translated by Catherine Cobham (Action Books)
Almadhoun is also a Palestinian refugee from Syria, but to Sweden, and this book also includes prose poetry about his experiences, but these works are really rather different! Please read both. This collection also has a lot of intertextuality and reflections on other art if you like that sort of thing – including reflecting on Paul Celan, which I found really meaningful personally.
23. Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr, translated by Marcia Lynx Qualey (Interlinks Books)
This is a children’s book full of adventure, sailing the seas, piracy, and crossdressing 🙂 It has a wonderful folkloric feel to it and it’s very engaging… I mean I’m no longer a child, but I loved it. She has a currently ongoing series too: Firebird, I need to pick up the next volume, but this one is to my knowledge a standalone.
24. Among the Almond Trees by Hussein Barghouthi, translated by Ibrahim Muhawi (Seagull Books / New Arab List)
A memoir focusing on the author’s thoughts about nature, land, belonging and coming to terms with having terminal cancer. A short, but rich and thoughtful book, it also pairs well with Palestinian Walks above! I just saw that there’s another book in translation out by him by the same press now: The Blue Light, so I’ll have to read that one too.
25. Tethered to Stars by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions)
Fady Joudah is a poet, translator and a doctor of medicine – he translated the poetry collection by Maya Abu al-Hayyat I mentioned above, but please please also don’t miss his own work! This is a collection that has exactly why I love poetry – keen observations of the smallest things to the largest, put in a way where they instantly become memorable and linger in the mind.
And to circle back to politics and the need to act, please watch this video from a few days ago where he talks to ABC News Live about the current situation in Gaza: as a doctor, as someone who has lost family in Gaza, as a human being. Then share with your friends.
