UNITED STATES AUTHOR
Susan Abulhawa
Also known as: ABULHAWA, Abulhawa Susan
Most acclaimed
The Scar of David
Het Palestijns-Israëlische conflict mist zijn uitwerking niet op vier generaties van een Arabisch-Palestijnse familie.
Mornings in Jenin
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.
My Voice Sought The Wind
"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.