Synopses & Reviews
What if all the
Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen
next? How would Israelis react?
These unsettling questions are posed in
Azem's powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty-eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have
vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators — Alaa, a
young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the
journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor,
Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event.
Through these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two
memories.
Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in
Israel's project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his
grandmother's memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a
refugee in her homeland. Ariel's search for clues to the secret of the
collective disappearance and his reaction to it intimately reveal the
fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.
The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss
and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that
is often marginalized, Antoon's translation of the critically acclaimed
Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of
Palestinians living in Israel.
Review
"Fantasy and magical realism
reflect reality, drawing on the 1948 Nakba [disaster], when many
Palestinians were displaced by the state of Israel's creation." World
Literature Today
Review
"The
Book of Disappearance demonstrates Azem's dexterity, imagination
and craft and has been brought to English-language readers in the pure,
measured prose of the poet and writer Sinan Antoon." The Citizen
Review
"In Jaffa, the most lively
presence is that of the dead. Ibtisam Azem has gifted us with a
poignant, mysterious, lyrical, new novel." Ahdaf Soueif, author of The
Map of Love
Synopsis
What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem's powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Through these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel's project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariel's search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.
The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Antoon's translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
About the Author
Ibtisam Azem is a
Palestinian short story writer, novelist, and journalist, based in New
York. She is a senior correspondent for the Arabic daily al-Araby al-Jadeed.
She has published two novels in Arabic. Some of her writings have been
translated and published in French, German and English in several
anthologies and journals. She is working on her third novel and pursuing
an MA in Social Work from NYU's Silver school.
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He is an associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School. His
translation of Mahmoud Darwish's
In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 National Translation Award.