Against the Loveless World: A Novel

Product Description
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner\n2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist\n“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author \nIn this “beautiful...urgent” novel (The New York Times), Nahr, a young Palestinian woman, fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East.\nAs Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of
My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s
Her Body and Other Parties.\nWritten with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (
Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
Review
“This utterly compelling novel of love, passion, and politics is also a story of personal and revolutionary awakening. Susan Abulhawa weaves a thrilling account of Nahr and her life—from young girl to independent woman—into the larger tapestry of Palestinian dispossession and resistance. Formed through the calamitous experiences of invasion, war, occupation, and sexual exploitation, Nahr becomes a political prisoner who is yet free in her own mind. An agent of history and a full-fledged subject of her own existence, Nahr stands at the center of Abulhawa’s ambitious epic.” -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer\n“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us, who are too often oblivious. A major writer of our time, to read Abulhawa is to begin to understand not simply the misinformation we have received for decades about what has gone on in Palestine and the Middle East, but to come to terms with our own resistance to feeling the terror of our own fear of Truth.” -- Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart\n“
Against the Loveless World is a masterpiece! As she does with every book, Susan Abulhawa paints stunningly beautiful and humanizing images of Palestinian women as they navigate the violence of settler-colonial oppression with dignity and agency. With this novel, she also forces us to wrestle with the complexities of love, freedom, struggle, and shame in ways that both inspire and challenge our very conceptions of what it means to be human. This is a major literary contribution that further cements Abulhawa’s status as one of the most important writers of our generation.” -- Marc Lamont Hill, award-winning author of Nobody\n“A thrilling, defiant novel. Abulhawa’s latest novel reads as a riot act against oppression, misogyny, and shame.” -- Fatima Bhutto, author of The Runaways\n“A powerful and expansive story of love, resistance, and the search for freedom. Abulhawa’s characters are raw, unapologetic, and unforgettable.” -- Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa\n“Nahr is a wonderful creation