Rawan's Middle Eastern Fiction Reading Group

Welcome back to the Middle Eastern Fiction Reading Group! Join us as we explore powerful and complex voices from the Middle East, a region that has an ancient, rich literary tradition. We will delve into novels that illuminate issues of identity, exile, resistance and belonging, told by authors whose work challenges and enriches our understanding of the Middle East and its people.

In February, we will be discussing The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem (Translated by Sinan Antoon). Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, this haunting Palestinian novel pushes the boundaries of speculative fiction by exploring a not-so-hypothetical question; what would happen if all Palestinians, from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea disappeared overnight?

Alaa, a young Palestinian, is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariel, Alaa’s neighbour and friend, is a liberal Zionist, critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project of Israel. When he wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, Alaa included, Ariel begins searching for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance; that search, and his reaction to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv – café patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters – against whose ordinary lives these fissures and questions play out.

This novel is precise and imaginative in its exploration of memory-loss and the reality Palestinians face on the ground in a context of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

“Do you know what it means to spend your life waiting? Waiting for those who left to return? You wait your whole life and keep talking about the past. But the past grows bigger and devours you. An entire people, those who stayed, seem mad when they talk about all that was before. As if what was wasn’t, or it was a world that only existed in their imagination. Jaffa. Jaffa is a name that pains me. I curse it everyday, because I still love it. Can you spit at what you love? Yes, because this love kills you.”