Books from Palestine

Born in Palestine on the eve of the 1948 Nakba, five-year-old Sufien is forced to leave his family’s ancestral home, beginning a lifelong journey shaped by displacement and the search for belonging. From a refugee camp in Syria to the oil-rich deserts of Kuwait, the university streets of Florence, and the crowded neighbourhoods of New York, Sufien moves between countries and cultures, repeatedly attempting to build a home somewhere new. Yet every place offers both the promise of reinvention and the painful reminder of what he has lost. In Kuwait, he experiences first love and family estrangement. In Italy, he discovers intellectual freedom and the intoxicating possibilities of life beyond his upbringing. Later, in New York, he forms an unlikely friendship with a wealthy Jewish American man and falls in love with a Jewish woman, creating a family of his own. But even as he establishes roots in the United States, the past remains an enduring presence. Recounted from his deathbed, Sufien’s story moves between memory and reflection, tracing the complicated relationship between exile, identity, and the desire to belong. Inspired by the life of Assadi’s Palestinian father, this lyrical novel explores how displacement reverberates across generations and asks whether home is a place we can recover, a community we create, or an idea we carry within ourselves.

Set in Israel and Palestine in 2000, Ever Land follows two teenage girls whose lives become intertwined across time. Dinah, a Jewish teenager from London, moves to Israel with her family after the death of her beloved father. Struggling to adjust to her new surroundings, she feels increasingly disconnected from the life she has been forced to leave behind. Meanwhile, Safa, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian girl killed during the Six-Day War in 1967, remains trapped in a mysterious limbo she calls the In-Between. Unable to move on without discovering what happened to her younger sister, Nur, Safa watches Dinah settle into the very house where she once lived. When an opportunity to find Nur emerges decades after Safa’s death, she realizes that Dinah may be the key to uncovering the truth. Moving between past and present, Abdelnoor explores displacement, historical memory, belonging, and the human connections that cross political and cultural divisions. Through the contrasting experiences of two young women, the novel examines how history shapes identity and how confronting the past can open possibilities for understanding and compassion.