This week on the show, I’m joined by two book-lovers, book bloggers and activists to talk about some really important issues: Ola Abou and Ilham Essalih.  We're talking about what books we should read to further understand the war on Gaza, and the war in Syria, and how the movements for liberation in Palestine and Syria are intertwined. 

At the time of recording (16th October), we were on day 9 of Israel’s war against Gaza, with the official death toll having reached nearly 3,000, 700 of whom are children and babies. For 9 days, the besieged Gaza strip has faced relentless attacks and a total land, sea and air blockade, cutting off its supplies of water, food and fuel to 2.3 million people. The situation is beyond horrendous, as hospitals struggle to cope with the injured amid a lack of medical supplies and doctors, and communities are being ordered to leave their homes due to imminent attacks. Even while leaving, passages that were previously declared as safe, have been attacked, sparing no one. There are also increasing reports on attacks in the occupied West Bank, and arrests of over 70 people. 

 The death toll has now exceeded well over 4,000 people, and schools and hospitals have been ruthlessly attacked. 

Unfortunately, Palestine is not the only place impacted by Israel at the moment. Israel has been bombing Syria, which since 2011, has been in a devastating state of war and crisis. Twelve years after protesters in Syria first demonstrated and rose up against the four-decade rule of the Assad family, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and nearly thirteen million people—more than half the country’s prewar population—have been displaced. Amid war, the Syrian people are suffering an economic crisis, and a massive earthquake at the start of 2023 cast much of the population in the north into further despair.

Follow Ola and Ilham on social media:

Ola: www.instagram.com/slowreadingola 
Ilham: www.instagram.com/ilhamreads

Books mentioned in this episode:

Palestine:
Classics

• Ghassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun, Palestine’s Children 
• Emile Habiby: The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist 
• Halim Barakat: Days of Dust (was meant to mention this book but I forgot but it’s really good!)
• Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish

Non-fiction/memoirs: 

Palestine writers:

• Edward Said: The Question of Palestine + his memoir Out of Place 
• Mourid Barghouti: I Saw Ramallah 
• Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine (history)

Jewish writers:

• Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine + Ten Myths About Israel 
• Avi Shlaim: Three Worlds 
• Massoud Hayoun: When We Were Arabs (forgot to mention this, it’s another memoir about Jews from Arab lands, really essential for understanding Zionism)

Contemporary:

• Isabella Hammad: The Parisian
• Adania Shibli: Minor Detail 
• Ahlam Bsharat: Trees of the Absentees + Code Name: Butterfly 
• Mohammed El-Kurd: Rifqa (poetry) 

Syria:

-In Praise of Hatred, Khaled Khalifa
-What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
-The Middle East Crisis Factory, Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash
-We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, Wendy Pearlman
-Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami
-You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, Alaa Abd El-Fattah
-The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh
-The Book Collectors: A Band of Syrian Rebels and the Stories That Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui

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