Against the loveless world A novel

Terrorist. Hero. Revolutionary. Whore. Nahr has been called all these and more, but, as she writes her own story from the Cube, where she is imprisoned for acts of terrorism against Israel, her story brings the varying degrees of truth behind those appellations to light. Born to a family of Palestinian refugees in Kuwait, Nahr suffers the disappointment of abandonment by her husband without even having a formal wedding. She soon begins a double life, where her skill at dancing leads to some unsavory associations and significant dangers. But it is when she meets her soon-to-be-ex-husband's brother in Palestine that her world completely begins to change. She discovers passion, love, and devotion to something more with Bilal, whose actions on behalf of the Palestinian cause will eventually lead her to the Cube. In this moving and nuanced novel, Abulhawa takes a hard look at the inheritance of exile and the intersection of the political with the personal, as Nahr's story reveals the complexity beneath the simple narratives told on both sides of a deep divide.

Abulhawa (The Blue Between Sky and Water) charts a Palestinian woman's gradual turn to sex work followed by violent resistance against Israeli settlers in this tragic and engrossing work. Middle-aged Nahr, the narrator, is in solitary confinement at an Israeli prison, where she recounts her life story. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian exiles in 1967 and named Yaqoot after her father's mistress, Nahr grows up with her mother, brother Jehad, and overbearing paternal grandmother. In 1985, she marries the gruff Mhammad, who abandons her two years later. Shortly after, Nahr meets a woman at a friend's wedding, who manipulates her into prostitution, which Nahr continues doing to help finance Jehad's education. When anti-Palestinian sentiment ramps up following the expulsion of the invading Iraqis in 1991, Jehad is arrested and tortured for collaboration, and the family flees to Jordan. The 1995 Oslo Accords allow Nahr to travel to Palestine and secure a divorce from Mhammad, and there she witnesses the injustices levied against Palestinians and joins in escalating acts of resistance until the eruption of the Second Intifada leads to serious danger. Abulhawa demonstrates the effect of trauma and helplessness on Nahr and others, leading them to violence. The detailed explorations of a woman's pain and desperate measures make this lush story stand out. Agent: Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary). (Aug.)

World renowned for Mornings in Jenin, Palestinian American author Abulhawa pits herself Against the Loveless World, with protagonist Nahr born in 1970s Kuwait to Palestinian refugees, growing up disappointed in life and love, flushed out of Kuwait by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and temporarily ensconced in Jordan before circling back to Palestine, where she ends up in solitary confinement. Called a Dr. Zhivago of Iran by Margaret Atwood, Iranian Canadian Hozar's Aria features a redheaded, blue-eyed baby girl rescued by an illiterate driver in Tehran and eventually passed on to multiple homes until the 1979 revolution ignites while she is at university. Short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Syrian author Wannous's The Frightened Ones opens with Suleima beginning a tentative relationship with mysterious novelist Nassim, then agreeing to take custody of his new manuscript when he flees to Germany. She's soon shocked to discover how much her life looks like that of the novel's protagonist, who even acts here as an alternate narrator.

THE CUBE, EAST I LIVE IN the Cube. I write on its glossy gray cinder-block walls however I can--with my nails before, with pencils now that the guards bring me some supplies.    Light comes through the small glass-block window high on the wall, reached only by the many-legged crawling creatures that also reside here. I am fond of the spiders and ants, which have set up separate dominions and manage to avoid each other in our shared nine-square-meter universe. The light of a world beyond, with a sun and moon and stars, or maybe just fluorescent bulbs--I can't be sure--streams through the window in a prism that lands on the wall in red, yellow, blue, and purple patterns. The shadows of tree branches, passing animals, armed guards, or perhaps other prisoners sometimes slide across the light. I once tried to reach the window. I stacked everything I had on top of the bed--a bedside table, the small box where I keep my toiletries, and three books the guards had given me (Arabic translations of Schindler's List , How to Be Happy , and Always Be Grateful ). I stretched as tall as I could on the stack but only reached a cobweb. When my nails were strong and I weighed more than now, I tried to mark time as prisoners do, one line on the wall for each day in groups of five. But I soon realized the light and dark cycles in the Cube do not match those of the outside world. It was a relief to know, because keeping up with life beyond the Cube had begun to weigh on me. Abandoning the imposition of a calendar helped me understand that time isn't real; it has no logic in the absence of hope or anticipation. The Cube is thus devoid of time. It contains, instead, a yawning stretch of something unnamed, without present, future, or past, which I fill with imagined or remembered life. Occasionally people come to see me. They carry on their bodies and speech the climate of the world where seasons and weather change; where cars and planes and boats and bicycles ferry people from place to place; where groups gather to play, eat, cry, or go to war. Nearly all of my visitors are white. Although I can't know when it's day or night, it's easy to discern the seasons from them. In summer and spring, the sun glows from their skin. They breathe easily and carry the spirit of bloom. In winter they arrive pale and dull, with darkened eyes. There were more of them before my hair turned gray, mostly businesspeople from the prison industry (there is such a thing) coming to survey the Cube. These smartly dressed voyeurs always left me feeling hollow. Reporters and human rights workers still come, though not as frequently anymore. After Lena and the Western woman came, I stopped receiving visitors for a while. The guard allowed me to sit on the bed instead of being locked to the wall when the Western woman, who looked in her early thirties, came to interview me. I don't remember if she was a reporter or a human rights worker. She may have been a novelist. I appreciated that she brought an interpreter with her--a young Palestinian woman from Nazareth. Some visitors didn't bother, expecting me to speak English. I can, of course, but it's not easy on my tongue, and I don't care to be accommodating. She was interested in my life in Kuwait and wanted to talk about my "sexuality." Excerpted from Against the Loveless World: A Novel by Susan Abulhawa All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.