TPAN

A monthly book club centred on exploring Palestinian literary voices.

The first book and some others will span two meetings. Paper, e-book or audiobook are all acceptable forms of reading.

Register by emailing: north.tpan@protonmail.com

When:

Two options are available:

• Friday June 12 - 10am-12pm
• Saturday June 13 - 1pm-3pm

Cost: Free, but books sourced at own cost.

This month's book selection: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Where to get it: 

Mornings in Jenin is available at Petrarch’s Bookshop, Launceston or online.

There is a copy available through Libraries Tasmania.

It is also available as an e-book.

About Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Genre: Fiction

With over a million copies sold and re-released for the 15th anniversary during the invasion of Gaza, Mornings in Jenin is haunting and heart-wrenching, a novel of vital contemporary importance. Lending human voices to the headlines, it gives us an insight into the background of the devastating scenes we seen on our screens.

In the refugee camp of Jenin, Amal is born into a world of loss-of home, country, and heritage. Her Palestinian family was driven from their ancestral village by the newly formed state of israel in 1948. As the villagers fled that day, Amal's older brother, just a baby, was stolen away by an israeli soldier. In Jenin, the adults subsist on memories, waiting to return to the homes they love. Amal's mother has walled away her heart with grief, and her father labours all day. But in the fleeting peacefulness of dawn, he reads to his young daughter daily, and she can feel his love for her, "as big as the ocean and all its fishes." On those quiet mornings, they dream together of a brighter future.

This is Amal's story, the story of one family's struggle and survival through over sixty years of the israeli occupation of Palestine, carrying us from Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon and the anonymity of America. It is a story shaped by scars and fear, but also by the transformative intimacy of marriage and the fierce protectiveness of motherhood. It is a story of faith, forgiveness, and life-sustaining love.

About Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa was born to refugees displaced by the 1967 war, when israel seized the remaining parts of Palestine, including Jerusalem. She is a globally acclaimed, award-winning Palestinian novelist and poet. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, became an international sensation and has been translated into 30 languages. Her follow-up novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, also achieved bestseller status and reached readers in 20 languages.

Abulhawa is the founder and President of Playgrounds for Palestine, an organization devoted to protecting Palestinian children’s Right to Play. In early 2024, she succeeded in entering Gaza twice through the Rafah crossing. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, she led a series of workshops for young people who were trying to survive the genocide in Gaza.

Her latest work, Every Moment Is a Life: Gaza in the Time of Genocide, is a bilingual Arabic-English anthology featuring essays from eighteen young Palestinian writers who participated in her workshops while enduring the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The global reach of her novels and the breadth of her readership have made Abulhawa one of the most widely read Arab authors of our time.

We’re looking forward to meeting you and exploring this relevant and illuminating novel together.