Over the past century more than 20 international commissions have been convened on the question of Palestine, Dr. Lori Allen uses them as the basis for her investigation into Palestinian political history.

In Sonia Nimr’s imagined historical fable set in Palestine hundreds of years ago, Qamr and her family embark on daring adventures across empires in a quest to remove a curse that hangs over their village, running into pirates, kings and kidnappers.

The book is an epic novel that follows Palestinian ex-pat Adam Dannoun and his brush with Blind Mahmoud that spurs an exploration of the past, and what happened to his hometown, the “ghetto” of Lydda in 1948.

Welcome to the inaugural reading of the Mondoweiss Book Club. As we teased, our first selection we will be read this month is Susan Abulhawa’s third novel, “Against the Loveless World.”

“Unwilling to make territorial, symbolic, or other compromises, Israel has not merely missed but sometimes even deliberately sabotaged repeated opportunities for peace with the Arab states and the Palestinians,” writes Jerome Slater in his forthcoming book.

“I do not recall a time in my life when I did not experience bans on freedom of speech,” writes Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi in a new book on academic freedom and its limits.

James Zogby writes, “The second decade of the 21st century began with two traumatic events that would transform the Middle East. In fact, although the seeds had been planted years earlier, 2011 proved to be a watershed year for the people of the region.”

An excerpt from Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh’s book “A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel”