A review by isalime
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall

dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

A bus full of kindergarteners is hit by a semi-truck near Jerusalem. The bus flips and catches fire. It took hours for emergency services to arrive. 
 
The crash serves as a type of epicenter for the book. The book is broken up into 5 sections with different POV and life stories of Palestinians and Israelies who were at the scene of the accident. Through their life stories, you learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict. 
 
“Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy” is a fitting subtitle as by the end you understand why the children were on the bus, why the semi-truck crashed into bus, why the emergency services took hours to arrive, why the accident was inevitable, and why different itirations of this tragedy will continue to happen throughout the region. 
 
I had little to no knowledge about the conflict and day to day life of Palestinians. I felt the book did its best to give me a concise history lesson and social context of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That being said, there were a couple of things I didn’t like. There are a lot of characters and even with the character list at the start of the book, it was hard for me to keep track of who everyone was. While the crash is the epicenter of the book, it takes a backseat as you learn about the life stories of the characters. I wasn’t always interested in the life stories and was dying to get back to the crash and the aftermath. 
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