{"product_id":"the-book-of-disappearance-by-ibtisam-azem-9780815611110","title":"The Book of Disappearance","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem's powerfully imaginative novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSet in contemporary Tel Aviv, forty-eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbours have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators. Alaa, a young Palestinian man, converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared. Meanwhile, his Jewish neighbour, Ariel, is a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThrough these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel's project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariel's search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Book of Disappearance\u003c\/em\u003e grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalised, Antoon's translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47398011764972,"sku":"9780815611110","price":53.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/10323483482478.jpg?v=1773736200","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/the-book-of-disappearance-by-ibtisam-azem-9780815611110","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}