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Book of Disappearance A Novel

by Ibtisam Azem and Sinan Antoon
Book of Disappearance A Novel

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ISBN13: 9780815611110
ISBN10: 0815611110



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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

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. 

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780815611110
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
07/12/2019
Publisher:
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Series info:
Middle East Literature in Translation
Pages:
256
Height:
.70IN
Width:
4.90IN
Author:
Ibtisam Azem
Translator:
Sinan Antoon
Author:
Sinan Antoon

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Add to Cart
$19.95
New Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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