Our month-long celebration of Palestinian literature over at Stretch Your Shelf has now blended seamlessly into Read Palestine Week, an initiative by Publishers For Palestine which includes over a dozen free titles available til December 5th.
As much as I delight in this avalanche of book recommendations – and have even started sharing carousels of titles by genre on Instagram – I admit that it can all be a little overwhelming.
So in this article, I’m reviewing 3 titles that I don’t think you can go wrong with when jumping into Palestine stories.
SALT HOUSES by Hala Alyan
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017
‘When Salma peers into her daughter’s coffee cup, she knows instantly she must lie.’
As a sucker for the art of first lines, this one pulled me in and held me rapt through four generations of the Yacoub family from this very first scene in Nablus in 1963, to homes made, undone and revisited in Kuwait City, Amman, Beirut, Paris and Boston.
One by one, Salma’s children leave their garden home in Nablus, their final stronghold in Palestine. Widad is wed and moves to Kuwait, long-lashed Mustafa throws himself in a resistance that he does not survive, and hard-headed Alia lives a stranded life in Kuwait with her husband Atef, who deals with the loss of his best friend and brother-in-law Mustafa by writing him letters in secret, and dotes on their children in a way that Alia could not. These dichothomous relationship are then echoes in the future selves of Riham, Souad and Karam, carving out completely different trajectories for themselves and their offspring.
Hala immerses the reader into the family’s lives, allowing us to learn of each member both in the tense moments of conflict, as well as the lull of afternoons in the Gulf. She has written embers into her characters, to either smolder or spark as they are hurled into new roles in foreign cities, under circumstances outside of their control.
The family uproots through several incursions on peace in the Gulf. The Six-Day war of 1967, the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Saddam Hussein’s Gulf War and invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the 2006 Lebanon War – igniting fear and indignation in lives so rich yet repeatedly besieged. Catching the news on TV screens, they shuttle family members from one uncertain city to another, living so fiercely despite forced choices and fragile futures.
Hala writes authentically in each voice, carrying the customs of the old and the rebelliousness of the young in alternate points of view. Her prose is lyrical in a way that grounds you; as a reader you are mired in the scents and sounds of the earth and the palpable emotions of life. She touches upon love at its height, and describes it just as faithfully when it morphs into the mundane. She speaks of steadfastness in a way that is understood by the faithful, while also creating space for those who dabble and doubt.
Hala Alyan has come to be one of my favourite authors, whether prose, poetry or contemporary commentary and while my recommendations of her work are many, Salt Houses remains to me a solid and satisfying entry into the realm of contemporary Palestinian fiction.
Other highly recommended titles recently published include Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is The Sea and Jumaana Abdu’s Translations – you can catch their interview on Stretch Your Shelf by joining here.
PALESTINE by Joe Sacco
Published by Jonathan Cape, 2003
This graphic novel (originally a 9-issue comic series now published in one volume) is a groundbreaking work of eyewitness journalism where Joe chronicles his own experience in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the first Intifada.
He starts in Cairo – the illustrations bold and loud to match what he describes as a rowdy city. As he finds his way across the border into Palestine, he treats us with a history lesson featuring the seed of Zionist ideology which was watered into fruition by that Brit, Balfour.
Back to present day (1991, 1992) he is on the streets meeting Palestinians in hospitals, social service offices, humble living rooms where he imbibes large quantities of tea and coffee and learns about their life under occupation. He’s often self deprecatory and sometimes crass – drawing himself sweating as he escapes a tense situation, tea and more tea, and candidly prattling about his journalistic priorities of ‘wanting to get the story.’
His humour, though, does not detract from the quality of his journalism. Through his narration and stark illustrations we come to learn so much: how prison work, how farmers are ripped off, the hamstrung public services, the Nakba, the Intifada, the death and raids. There are numerous interviews and thorough research into the life of Palestinians under occupation and apartheid.
What makes this book a triumph is not just the depth, breadth and candor of his reportage, but the pain-staking details he has etched into his illustrations. Every panel is heavily textured – the clothes, the litter-strewn ground, the corrugated metal, the storm-filled skies – there’s a high-contrast dynamism that jumps off the page.
Heartbreakingly, I recognise so much of his reportage from the news today – 30 years on. The scenes in Jabalia refugee camp, the armed occupation soldiers, the donkey-drawn carts, steadfast Palestinian faces enduring, enduring and still enduring.
Palestine by Joe Sacco has cemented my appreciation of comics and graphic novels as a compelling method of truth-telling.
A MAP FOR FALASTEEN by Maysa Odeh and Aliaa Betawi
Published by Henry Holt, 2024
Where do I begin to talk about the loveliness and the importance of this book, and where do I end? It’s a story full of history, culture and affirmation and as I lingered on each page, I saw that the past year has also brought it new meaning.
Falasteen is a curly-haired, thick-browed little girl who can’t find her family’s ancestral land, Palestine, on her classroom map.
She asks the first of many questions, ‘Miss Baker, why isn’t Palestine on the map.’ Miss Baker raises a finger to her chin and says, ‘I think there’s no such place.’
She takes her questions to more informed sources: her jido, who lights up when he sees her curious face appear near his grape vines, her teta who is making spinach pies, and her mother who tucks her in after Isha prayer.
From them, she receives a map with names of old, a precious iron key, and the undeniable truth that ‘Sometimes people live in countries, sometimes countries live in people. Palestine lives in you and me.’
Maysa’s writing takes you to the heart of the story then lets a blossom bloom there. Her words of affirmation fill the reader with a truth that is as ancient as it is resilient. So many times in reading it aloud, I feel a great lump in my throat, and imagine the calm and grace of Maysa’s own voice as she shared these affirmations with her own daughter in real life, how they must have been told to her.
Aliaa’s naive-style illustrations are expressive and imaginative. She gives each scene wings – homes are strapped to the backs of the displaced, sprouting olive branches to shade a sorrowful Falasteen, and later, a kite so light and simple but strong enough to raise Falasteen into the air, soaring and smiling over her homeland.
I think about this decades-long attempt to erase the Palestinian people, and how it has intensified into an outright genocide over the past 14 months. This book was written and illustrated before October 2023, and yet the symbols within them are ironically made more recognisable since. Millions will now understand the need for a book like this in the mainstream. They will pick out the key in the classroom drawings, the pattern on Falasteen’s bedside lamp, will not have to look up ‘dabke’ or ‘thobe.’ They may, as I did, cry at the way Maysa dedicated this book to her daughter, using the phrase, ‘soul of my soul.’
In trying to erase Palestine, they have simply made everyone of us just a little more Palestinian.
A Map for Falasteen belongs in every home and classroom around the world.
It is incredibly hard to choose just one Palestinian picture book from a rich selection portraying culture and identity such as –‘Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine’ by Hannah Moushabeck & Reem Madouh, and ‘Hilwa’s Gifts’ by Safa Suleiman & Anait Semirdzyan – as well as clever, hilarious titles – like ‘Halal Hot Dogs’ by Susannah Aziz & Parwinder Singh and ‘The Book That Almost Rhymed’ by Omar Abed & Hatem Aly.
Share a Palestinian title that you love in the comments, or your thoughts on any of the titles above. Our Read Palestine Week segment has recommendations in all genre all year long, so don’t forget to take a look.