The latest addition to my website is Ibrahim Fawal‘s On the Hills of God. This tells the story of Ardallah, an idyllic Palestinian town and its inhabitants, focussing on Yousif Safi, aged seventeen, still at school at the start of the novel, only son of the well-off and well-respected local doctor. The novel opens in June 1947 and we follow the gradual incursions of the Zionists, as well as the UN decision to partition the country when the British mandate ends. Yousif is reluctant to fight, favouring negotiation while his father refuses to release the hospital fund so that the town can buy arms to defend themselves against the increasing Zionist incursions. Yousif also has romantic problems as the parents of the girl he loves have promised her to someone else. But as the UN votes for partition (under US pressure) and the British mandate comes to end, the inevitable is going to happen. This book could do with a bit of editing but it is still worth reading.