A review by jayisreading
Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction by Sonia Sulaiman

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.0

“Someone once said that all Palestinian fiction is speculative; we are always grappling with the past and living in expectation of the future, while our fictions tell of alternate histories—being, by definition, histories told by the colonized. Others say that the definition of the speculative is itself a colonial imposition.”

I found that these lines from Sonia Sulaiman’s preface really stayed with me while reading this anthology. It also raises a really fascinating question of what “speculative” might mean for different groups, and one that I’ll be thinking about for a long while. Thyme Travellers is a short anthology of speculative fiction written by authors from the Palestinian diaspora, all of whom are (re)imagining a world for their people and motherland in different ways. Like any anthology, some stories stood out to me more than others. Personally, the two that I think are absolute must-reads from this anthology are Nadia Afifi’s “The Generation Chip” and Samah Serour Fadil’s “Gaza Luna.” I felt that both authors beautifully captured the love and resilience of Palestinians in their own unique manner.

I do (rather selfishly) wish a lot of these stories were longer, but I think each author brought something to this anthology that will give the reader much to think about, especially as we continue to push for a world with a liberated Palestine.
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