The Book of Disappearance, by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon has been Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, 2025.
This critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day?
The Book of Disappearance is set in contemporary Tel Aviv. Alaa is a young Palestinian man who is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. His Jewish neighbour and friend, Ariel, is a journalist who believes in Israel’s national myth but is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He begins to search for clues about why Alaa and the Palestinians have vanished. Their stories, and the stories of the ordinary people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.
Ibtisan Azem’s spare and evocative novel is an unforgettable glimpse into contemporary Palestine as it grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory.
Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, based in New York. She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in the 1948 Nakba. She lived in Jerusalem before moving to Germany and later to the US. Azem has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014). Her first short story collection, City of Strangers, is forthcoming in Arabic in the summer of 2025.
Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He holds degrees from Baghdad and Harvard and has published two collections of poetry and five novels in Arabic. Antoon’s writings in English have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Nation, among others. Antoon returned to his native Baghdad in 2003 to co-direct About Baghdad, a documentary about the lives of Iraqis in a post-Saddam-occupied Iraq. He is an associate professor of Arabic literature at New York University.
Praise for Ibtisam Azem:
- ‘Brilliantly conceived and searingly executed.’ Claire Messud
- ‘In this immensely readable novel, Ms Azem does not resolve for us the calamity of Palestine’s occupation by Israel. But stylishly and with jeweled virtuosity she makes us understand that acts of great and human imagination will be required, and with this potent book points where and how we must all go.’ Richard Ford
- ‘Speculative and haunting, this is an exceptional exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography.’ The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges
- ‘Seductively bold…This rich, potent novel reminds us that there are no easy answers.’ Guardian.
