A review by seeceeread
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
💭 "I bristled with rage that had nowhere to go. The ceaseless accumulation of injustice made me want to fight the world."
Last year, I asked for recommendations for 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭-𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 literature and all of Abulhawa's books were listed. This is her third novel and my first time reading her. Y'all did not lie 😭
The first lines introduce a graying woman scratching a memoir in apparent gibberish on her cell walls. She recounts a scrappy girlhood, a brief adolescence, a period of sex work to combat the family's poverty, a blink of an unfulfilled marriage. She is displaced multiple times with her mother, brother and grandmother, shuffling from Kuwait to Oman and Jordan. She begins to truly shine when she returns to her homeland, Palestine, to finalize a divorce. There, she begins to deepen her relationship to her body, her desires, her politics. As part of a small clique, she weaves these together into a theory of collective action against their colonizers, of finding the music that will spur the people to simultaneous resis(d)ance.
Nahr is incredibly well-written, obscenely believable, damn complicated, wholly admirable, incompletely charming. As a sort of complementary main character, Palestine is, too.
I learned many years ago that frank discussion of the Palestinian quotidian is treated (by some) as inflammatory, as if the truth is too damning to be broached. Abulhawa goes beyond naming daily settler tactics: surveillance, color-coding, subsidized migration to replace Palestinians, curfews, spies ... or military theater. She wraps it around readers, questioning every quiet moment as threatening, and role playing freedom dreams (and doubts) in dialogue. While there's room for dissent, she also underlines her stance: The title nods to Baldwin's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 and she explicitly connects liberation struggles across oceans: "To act is to be committed. And to be committed is to be in danger."
Last year, I asked for recommendations for 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭-𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 literature and all of Abulhawa's books were listed. This is her third novel and my first time reading her. Y'all did not lie 😭
The first lines introduce a graying woman scratching a memoir in apparent gibberish on her cell walls. She recounts a scrappy girlhood, a brief adolescence, a period of sex work to combat the family's poverty, a blink of an unfulfilled marriage. She is displaced multiple times with her mother, brother and grandmother, shuffling from Kuwait to Oman and Jordan. She begins to truly shine when she returns to her homeland, Palestine, to finalize a divorce. There, she begins to deepen her relationship to her body, her desires, her politics. As part of a small clique, she weaves these together into a theory of collective action against their colonizers, of finding the music that will spur the people to simultaneous resis(d)ance.
Nahr is incredibly well-written, obscenely believable, damn complicated, wholly admirable, incompletely charming. As a sort of complementary main character, Palestine is, too.
I learned many years ago that frank discussion of the Palestinian quotidian is treated (by some) as inflammatory, as if the truth is too damning to be broached. Abulhawa goes beyond naming daily settler tactics: surveillance, color-coding, subsidized migration to replace Palestinians, curfews, spies ... or military theater. She wraps it around readers, questioning every quiet moment as threatening, and role playing freedom dreams (and doubts) in dialogue. While there's room for dissent, she also underlines her stance: The title nods to Baldwin's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 and she explicitly connects liberation struggles across oceans: "To act is to be committed. And to be committed is to be in danger."