TPAN

A book club centred on Palestinian literary excellence

Register by emailing us at tpan.lutruwita@protonmail.com

Cost: Free, but books sourced at own cost

Run time: 2 hours

Capacity: 12 participants

This month's book selection: Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd

*We recommend that participants have finished at least 80% of the book by the meetup date in order to affectively engage in discussions. There is no rule on how you read the book (physical, e-book or audiobook are all acceptable forms of reading)

Where to get it: 

Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal is currently for sale at Fullers Bookshop and various online retailers.

There is a copy available through Libraries Tasmania.

There are also ebook and audiobook versions available.

About Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

About Mohammed El-Kurd

Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organiser from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation’s first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which was a previous book for Kitaab Club.