They were all there to greet me, enfolding me in the embrace of our collective dislocation from this place where all our stories go and return. Here is where we began. Where our songs were born, our ancestors buried.
page 152, Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Table of Contents
Preamble
Against the Loveless World is another book that has been in my to-be-read pile for years. I think I first about it through a booktuber I watch though I am not sure which, I didn’t make a note of it at the time.
I have heard generally good things about this book and I have also heard that this is a very sad and heavy book. I can confirm that is indeed the case and if you plan on reading this book you should take a look at the content warnings on Storygraph before you proceed. The heavy subject matter is one of the reasons I put off reading this book as long as I have.
Like with the previous few books, I read a library borrowed copy of this book. Putting holds on books that have been in my to-be-read pile for a long time has so far proven to be a good way to make a dent in said pile. The limited time of the library loan and the physical presence of the book overrides any misgivings or doubts I might have about reading these books.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The book starts with a large list of transliterated Arabic terms that the book uses throughout the story. I was grateful for this because while I knew some of the terms there were a lot that I didn’t know and it led me to learning about various Palestinian and other Arab dishes that I was not familiar with. Msakhan is the one that caught my eye.
msakhan – A traditional layered Palestinian dish, with a large piece of taboun bread at the base, covered with heaps of caramelized onions and generous spicing with sumac, topped off with roasted chicken, toasted almonds, and pine nuts
xiv, Glossary, ibid
The story is told from the perspective of the main character Nahr who recounts her life while sitting in solitary confinement in a Israeli prison called The Cube. This specific aspect of the book was some of the most harrowing to read. At the beginning of each section of the book Nahr will describe her horrible life in prison and the space she inhabits. The specific details appear to come from the author talking to actual ex-prisoners of such Israeli prisons and I appreciate the results of such research.
The Cube is thus devoid of time. It contains, instead, a yawning stretch of something unnamed, without present, future, or past, which I fill with imagined or remembered life.
page 4, ibid
The word that keeps coming to mind when I think about this book is – accumulation. More specifically the accumulation of trauma through one’s life. Nahr’s life from the beginning is a series of traumatic experiences -from being a Palestinian refugee to being tricked into sex work to the societal expectations of her as a woman to the Israeli settler state. Nahr is always fighting a battle of some kind or another.
The ceaseless accumulation of injustice made me want to fight the world, to lash out somehow, scream. But all I could do was weep in my brother’s arms.
page 212, ibid
The many horrors are so relentless that any moments of joy in this story feel like drops of water in a desert, one finds themselves thirsting for them. There are moments of defiant respite and joy throughout, from the beaches of Kuwait to the olive trees of Palestine. Nahr falling in love and sharing a kiss makes for romantic prose that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.
No one had ever kissed me with such love, and it occurred to me that happiness can reach such depths that it becomes something akin to grief.
page 224, ibid
At this point I have read a few books about Palestine, all of them non-fiction, this is the first fiction book about a Palestinian experience I have read. After I finished it I found myself wondering what I would have thought of this book if I had read when it came out in 2020 instead of now in 2025 when we are seeing the genocide of Palestinians unfolding in front of our eyes. Would this book hit as hard?
I don’t know the answer to that question. I do know that this book hit me really hard. At the beginning I felt a sense of desensitization to the various traumatic experiences Nahr described. However as the book progressed, the “ceaseless accumulation of injustice” created a overwhelming maelstrom of sadness and anger within me. By the end of it I was left in tears.
I indulge an illicit fantasy of a world that would have allowed us to simply live, raise children, hold jobs, move freely on earth, and grow old together.
page 353, ibid
I love Nahr – she is one of the best characters I have read in a while. Defiant, witty, sarcastic, loves her family fiercely, she is a force of nature. I was rooting for her the entire story, I connected with her pain, her sadness, anger and loneliness. From her time in prison to Kuwait to Jordan to Palestine – reading all of that made that sentence in that last quote so impactful.
Conclusions
Against the Loveless World is a very good book. Its been on my mind ever since I finished it and I suspect it will be a story that will remain on my find. It is a story of a Palestinian experience told in well written & grounded prose. A story filled with all the complexities of life as a refugee, it is also a story filled with moments of revolutionary joy. Well worth the journey if you are able to read it.
I’ll leave y’all with a list of other books about Palestine that I’ve read along with their reviews:
- The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
- The Question of Palestine by Edward Said
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
This book is a worthy addition to that list and I think it should be on everyone’s Palestine reading list. Additionally, I recommend the album After the Last Sky by Anouar Brahem, Anja Lechner, Django Bates & Dave Holland as musical accompaniment to your reading.
P. S – The name of this book is based on a bit of James Baldwin’s writing. If there was ever a book that gets to make use of James Baldwin in this way, it is this one.
Here you were: to be loved. To be loved, baby, hard, at once, and forever, to strengthen you against the loveless world.
James Baldwin
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