The latest addition to my website is Agustina Bessa-Luís‘s A Sibila [The Sibyl]. The novel tells the story of Quina, a Portuguese woman in a male-dominated society. Her father spends his money on women and gets involved in a bitter dispute over water rights which he loses, dying soon after. The cost to the family … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Margherita Giacobino‘s L’età ridicola (The Ridiculous Age). This novel tells the story of an unnamed elderly woman whio is aware that death is not far away. She lives in an upstairs flat in a city with her also very elderly cat. She has an immigrant carer, Gabriela,. She … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sahar Mustafah‘s The Beauty of Your Face. This novel is set primarily in the Chicago suburbs. However the heroine, Afaf Rahman, like the author, is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. We follow two alternating stories . The first is Afaf’s story. Her parents did not get on and … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Isabella Hammad‘s The Parisian. Midhat Kamal lost his mother when he was two. When his father remarries, Midhat is sent off to a French school in Constantinople and then to study medicine in Montpellier. Things do not go well there, partially because he falls in love with his … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Selma Dabbagh‘s Out of It. The book opens in Gaza with the Mujahed family and their friends and neighbours. Rashid is eager to go to a London where he has a scholarship to study and a girlfriend. His twin sister, Iman, is involved in a women’s group and … Read more
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 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