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The Book of Disappearance
The Book of Disappearance: A Novel | Ibtisam Azem
2 posts | 1 read | 5 to read
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 Azems 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 Israels project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmothers memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariels 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, Antoons translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
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Half thought experiment - All Palestinians in Israel disappear - how would those left behind react?

Half record of the trauma experienced by Palestinians.

Very sad book and very political. The sympathy is with the Palestinians but the Jewish POV chapters are very human - characters are portrayed as a misguided and self-interested, not as monsters.

Smrloomis Interesting. Thanks for the helpful review. 5y
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Smrloomis
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This looks really interesting 🤔 I also like that the publisher put “Translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon” on the cover!

Settings Reading this one now - it is interesting 5y
Smrloomis @Settings ooooh I‘m going to have to get a copy. Let me know what you think when you finish! 5y
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