Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker PrizeAlaa is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland after the Nakba. Ariel, Alaa's neighbour and friend, is a liberal Zionist, critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project of Israel. When he wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, Ariel begins searching for clues to the secret of their collective disappearance.That search, and Ariel's reactions to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv - cafe patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters - against whose ordinary lives these fissures and questions play out.'Speculative and haunting, this is an exceptional exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography' The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges

Autorentext
Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist and journalist. She has published two novels in Arabic: Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief, 2011) and Sifr al-Ikhtifaa (The Book of Disappearance, 2014). The Book of Disappearance has been published in English, German, and Italian. She lives in New York. Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, and translator. He holds degrees from Baghdad, Georgetown, and Harvard, where he specialized in Arabic literature. He has published five novels and three poetry collections. His most recent work is Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull 2023). His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 American Literary Translators' Award. He is an associate professor at New York University.

Klappentext
Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize

Alaa is haunted by his grandmother''s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland after the Nakba. Ariel, Alaa's neighbour and friend, is a liberal Zionist, critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project of Israel. When he wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, Ariel begins searching for clues to the secret of their collective disappearance.

That search, and Ariel's reactions to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv - café patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters - against whose ordinary lives these fissures and questions play out.

''Speculative and haunting, this is an exceptional exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography'' The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges

Zusammenfassung
Alaa, a Palestinian, is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being displaced from Jaffa. Ariel, Alaa's friend, is a liberal Zionist. When all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, Ariel begins searching for clues. Between their stories are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv café patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters.