Description
By (author) Thrall Nathan
:
WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE
”A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank” The Best Books to Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,
Financial Times
”Brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this … a book that speaks with deep and authentic truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history” Observer
A gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision
Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad”s fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian.
Interwoven with Abed”s odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.
A TIME, NEW STATESMAN AND FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
Review quote:
A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank arranged around the story of a Palestinian child and a school trip that ends in tragedy following a traffic accident. Weaving together the ordinary and interwoven lives of Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants, Thrall, a Jerusalem-based author and journalist, illuminates the complex realities of one of the world’s most contested regions
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Nathan Thrall’s searing new book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, struck me as important even before the obscene massacres and mass kidnappings committed by Hamas this month lit the Middle East on fire. Today, with people still struggling to understand the contours of this deeply complicated conflict, the book seems essential
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Shows humanity on both sides… The author writes coolly, carefully, without rhetoric or invective. He does not claim neutrality — the daily humiliations of Israeli occupation thud like a drumbeat on every page — but he avoids arm-twisting reportage or cartoonish history. No one portrayed here lacks humanity or complexity… quietly heartbreaking… a galloping narrative of hope and dread
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A compelling work of nonfiction, a book that is by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense as a thriller….not only a meticulously detailed account of one event but perhaps the clearest picture yet of the reality of daily life in the occupied territories
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This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel. At its centre is a tragic road accident outside Jerusalem in the West Bank from which Thrall, a Jewish American journalist, carefully traces the labyrinthine lives of those involved and the tangled web of politics, history and culture that ensnare them all
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Chronicles the asymmetry in the occupied West Bank today that its main character cannot reverse. It is
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