TPAN

A book club centred on Palestinian literary excellence

This month's book selection: Against The Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Cost: Free, but books sourced at own cost

*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)

Please note, the location will be close to our rally location in Nipaluna, and will be confirmed after registration.

Where to get it: 

Against The Loveless World is currently for sale at local bookshops and various online retailers.

There are copies available through Libraries Tasmania.

There are also ebook and audiobook versions available.

About Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Nahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere; because Nahr is not going to share her story with them.

The world outside calls Nahr a terrorist, and a whore; some might call her a revolutionary, or a hero. But the truth is, Nahr has always been many things, and had many names.

She was a girl who learned, early and painfully, that when you are a second class citizen love is a kind of desperation; she learned, above all else, to survive.

She was a girl who went to Palestine in the wrong shoes, and without looking for it found what she had always lacked in the basement of a battered beauty parlour: purpose, politics, friends. She found a dark-eyed man called Bilal, who taught her to resist; who tried to save her when it was already too late.

Nahr sits in the Cube, and tells her story to Bilal. Bilal, who isn't there; Bilal, who may not even be alive, but who is her only reason to get out.

Against the Loveless World has won the Palestine Book Award.

About Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa was born to refugees of the 1967 war when israel captured what remained of Palestine, including Jerusalem. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter. She is the founder and President of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children's organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her essays and political commentaries have appeared in print and international news media and she is a contributing author to two anthologies, Shattered Illusions and Searching Jenin. Mornings in Jenin, which we read for Kitaab Club North, was her first novel.