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.”
We’re excited to introduce the Mondoweiss Book Club. It’s a six-month, go at your own pace program, featuring works of fiction by Palestinian and Arab authors.
Haidar Eid writes, “In Gaza, staying at home leads to some existential questions and deep soul searching. With time to reflect, I am tempted to cross that invisible thin line separating fiction from reality. The real world of occupation, blockade, apartheid, settler-colonialism, and coronavirus on the one hand, and on the other, the imaginary world of my favorite authors.”
Amos Oz was a great storyteller, and the last vibrant connection to the Shoah generation. In his work, he sought to ennoble Israel’s creation by using his parents’ story of fleeing Europe to show how unsafe Jews are in the west. He was an Israeli provincial, and his death is a great blow to Zionism, which has few idealistic lights left to uphold.
The Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh does not support a two-state or one-state solution. “We should focus on calling for the end of the occupation, and then we can find ways that we can live together,” he tells Jaclynn Ashly.