62 books like Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies

What I love in Hiller’s writing is the no-glory honesty of growing up in settings of omniscient violence where the last wish of the protagonists is to be heroic. They are vulnerable young men trying to get by, to do the right thing, to find calm.

This book and its sister book, Shake Off, are some of the finest works of fiction set during political conflict and war that I have read. Hiller’s gracious enough as to refrain from indulging in the gratuitous or the showy, but these are finely crafted thrillers. They are both equally gripping, taking the reader through worlds rarely seen by English language readers.

Take the bleakest setting you can imagine–such as a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon –quadruple the population, encircle it, populate it with militias, then turn yourself into an absurdist or a surrealist to describe it. This seems to be the task that Maarouf has set himself with this collection of short stories, which are as funny and surprising as they are somber and sobering.

He is a poet and a comedian. The poet in him stops, dwells, absorbs, and is porous to the unfolding loss around him before the comedian kicks in with his will to survive. A quirky, uncanny collection. 

Azem takes a premise here and runs with it. How about, she asks, if all the Palestinians just disappeared, what would the reaction be?

The heart of the novel is the grandmother character, who dies as the book opens and the other Palestinians vanish and I wanted more recollections of her, more of her dialogue. Set mainly between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the fusing of the two names irritates the grandmother, who says it’s "just like someone being up your ass. You don’t see them, and they never let go."

There are sharp cameos here of Israeli-Palestinian relations, from buyers and sellers to torturers and prisoners, pimps and sex workers. I found the conclusion to be too bleak, but the writing is good, and the observations are sharp. 

At a time of death and destruction in Gaza, this book is one of the only volumes that brings to the English language reader some of the voices from inside a small strip of land that has been under siege by land, sea, and air for sixteen years.

Although the quality of the writing is variable, I found that the rawness of the collection made the writers seem more intimate. With some gutsy writing by women and tender pieces by men, the anthology subverts assumptions and provides a wide heterogeneity of voices to the fore. 

Finkelstein is the son of holocaust survivors and explains so meticulously how terribly Israel has treated the people of Gaza since occupying it in 1967. Two-thirds of its two million Palestinian inhabitants are refugees, and more than half its population is under 18. Israel has not only systematically destroyed the Gazan economy turning into “the world’s largest open-air prison camp,” But it has launched no fewer than nine military operations against Gaza – including Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and Operation Protective Edge in 2014 with its latest bout of savage bombing all but destroying the place altogether.

Yoram Peri’s expertise on the historical entanglements of the military and political sectors in Israel is unrivaled.  Based on personal interviews with all major players Peri goes behind the scenes to show the real meaning of the standard Israeli formula that the “Arab problem” should be seen “through the gunsight.” He describes how different generals, even those open to an accommodation with the Palestinians and opposed to settlers, were either stymied or transformed into saboteurs of the Oslo peace process. This pattern he attributes to the hegemonic psychology, standard operating procedures, processes of socialization, and political demands, associated with the way the Israel Defense Forces are organized and integrated into Israeli politics. Particularly vivid is his portrayal of upper-echelon Israeli military frustration at its forced withdrawal from Lebanon and how that resulted in the IDF’s extraordinarily violent and destructive treatment of the Gaza Strip.

Joe Saccos’ work has had such an impression on me.

In 1991-1992, Sacco spent two months in the occupied territories, collecting stories for this masterpiece of journalism and comics. He was breaking new ground; Comics Journalism as a form did not really exist before this book.

On the ground, Sacco found that as a cartoonist, he could delve deeper into the experiences of the Palestinians he interviewed; all knew their identities were safe as the book would be drawn, with no identifying photos, no names. Their stories and pain pour forth. 

Looking back on this publication thirty years later, the situation has become far, far worse for Palestinians. This book is an excellent primer to understand the atrocities of the present and the context of their past.

I heard Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish speak at the Auckland Writer’s Festival some years back now. The auditorium was packed, yet you could hear a pin drop, so moved was the audience by this man’s profound humanity. A dedicated physician who, despite having suffered personal tragedy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has not allowed hatred or revenge to corrode his life. He continues to work tirelessly for peace and resolution in the troubled Gaza region and is a beacon of hope for all mankind. 

Palestinian Walks is a hiking memoir by Raja Shehadeh, who invites you to wander with him and mourn for the loss of an irreplaceable wilderness and the rights of the people who’ve lived there for millennia. Over six hikes, spanning a quarter-century, Shehadeh chronicles how his beloved hills outside Ramallah have been violently transformed by Israeli colonization. Fortress-like settlements have replaced rolling hilltops; highways have fractured ecosystems and human communities alike; streams have filled with garbage as development outpaces infrastructure; and the simple act of walking has been transformed, as it becomes both illegal and life-threatening for the author to explore the hills of his ancestors.

Shehadeh’s prose is searingly beautiful and inspired in me a profound love for this biome, which I have never visited. The climate movement must center indigenous voices, and Palestinian Walks is particularly deft at shedding light on the connections between indigenous land rights, colonization,… show more.

In novels and non-fiction, Israeli author David Grossman has spent much of his career writing about the failed struggle for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

This series of essays, written over a period of years, chronicles moments of goodwill and hope on both sides, constantly undermined by sectarian passion and extremist opposition to peace.