BOOK REVIEW - AGAINST THE LOVELESS WORLD

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: August 25th 2020

Setting: Kuwait, Palestine, Jordan

Rating: 5 Stars

Synopisis:

A sweeping and lyrical novel that follows a young Palestinian refugee as she slowly becomes radicalized while searching for a better life for her family throughout the Middle East, for readers of international literary bestsellers including Washington Black, My Sister, The Serial Killer, and Her Body and Other Parties.

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation

My Thoughts....

It’s been 16 years since Nahr was put in the Cube. She spends her days staring at the wall or waiting on the shower head to be turned on so she can take a shower. When she gets bored, she gets into mischief – clogging the toilet or drawing the walls with her menstrual blood or shouting obscenities to the guards. At times she is allowed ‘International’ visitors who are curious about Palestinian political prisoners in Israel. Most only interested in ‘her pussy’s story’. But recently, she was allowed a pen and paper and she wants to tell her story.

I want to tell it as storytellers do – with emotional anchors, but I recall emotions in name only. My life returns to me in images, smells and sounds, but never feelings. I feel nothing.

In a detached, yet emotive manner, Nahr allows us into her life - from her childhood in Kuwait, born to Palestinian refugees who fled the 1967 Six day War to the present day as a middle aged woman in an Israeli prison. Nahr, like Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Sadaawi is a female character who will stay with you. I couldn’t help but draw similarities between these two female characters. Both crafted so realistically and complete – telling their stories unhinged, unapologetic, unyielding and unwilling to continue engaging with the imposition of propriety on women. This retelling was a cathartic release for Nahr, not a plea for understanding or empathy.

Abulhawa has written such a compelling and haunting story of displacement, survival, violence and resilience, of conflict and resistance, of family and love. The prose is so assured and so confident. This is by far her strongest work that I have read.

Through Nahr’s account, Abulhawa paints a vivid picture of the Middle East conflict which is as complicated as it is lengthy. I’m still trying to understand how the world sits right with Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and the continued establishment of Israeli settlements in Palestine. Essentially pushing Palestinians out and disallowing their return because it would “overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.”

I have loved this book with everything I have. The characters, all very three dimensional and flawed, the lyricism and assuredness in prose, the pacing of the book, the alternating perspectives from past to present, the history lessons – it’s all magnificent. A highly recommended read.