Susan Abulhawa

Het Palestijns-Israëlische conflict mist zijn uitwerking niet op vier generaties van een Arabisch-Palestijnse familie.

"I wrote poetry before I wrote anything else," says Susan Abulhawa, esteemed Palestinian-American author and social activist, in the introduction to her first book of poems, My Voice Sought the Wind. This new work follows her highly acclaimed novel, Mornings in Jenin, which has been translated into 32 languages since it was published in 2010. My Voice Sought the Wind presents five years of Abulhawa's best poems on the timeless themes of love, loss, identity, and family, brought to life through her vivid observations and intimate personal reflections. She speaks from her own experience, with a style that is romantic, but tinged with disillusionment, often a bit sad and always introspective. The five sections of the book echo her personal journey, from the pain of separation from her homeland and her bitter, yet nostalgic memories of the past, through various phases of love and regret, through the experience of mortality, and finally to her reconciliation with the future and hope of new birth. My Voice Sought the Wind resonates with the works of Pablo Neruda and other icons of the world poetic canon, while heralding a powerful new voice that is distinctively lyrical, distinctively feminist, and distinctively Palestinian. The grapevine cover and interior motifs by the talented U.K.-based graphic designer Muiz complement the poetry by evoking the struggle, pain, promise, and hope experienced throughout the process of cultivating grapes-- or poems.

"There was a time when they lived in the village of Beit Daras, and the sun was hot and the earth was rich. There were ruins dating back to the Crusades; now their homes, too, are ruins, and they are refugees in the small strip of Gaza. And yet, when young Khaled dies, and moves on to the afterlife, it is back in Beit Daras that he finds himself. And from here he may slip through history, watching the continuing the story of his matriarchal family. He sees his grandmother, Nazmiyeh, once the prettiest, baddest girl in the town, the eternal ringleader. The other girls felt she hung the sky. He sees his mother, Alwan, who loves quietly and strongly, and who sustains the family through her embroidery work, stitching the stars and moon in place. He sees the great-aunts and cousins, and his sunny little sister, Rhet Shel. Finally, there is the branch of the family that moves to Kuwait, and then to America, where Nur, his mother's cousin, begins to lose herself. She will return to Mediterranean shores to find her past, and rediscover the ties of kinship that transcend distance and even death. Born of the violent, troubling history which continues to rage forth and claim its dead, The Blue Between Sky and Water is very much a novel of survival, and of the vivid, powerful women whose world they manage, with each day, to enlarge and to enliven"--Publisher.

2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist “Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author In this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East. As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties. Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family. The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch's bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.