nico

Susan Abulhawa, you are a prism to the light of language and storytelling. ‘Against the Loveless World' is electric, comforting, righteous, and somber. The writing is fantastic is what I'm trying to say. As someone who grew up outside of Arab culture, and really everyone except for white American and Black culture, I am so filled with a comfort and familiarity in the way that Abulhawa so thoughtfully and deliberately writes about it here. Reading 384 pages of a first accounting of Palestinian culture, history, and strife is rapidly mind-growing. It's helped me gain such a deeper understanding of the struggle of living under occupation in an unjust world. The way Nahr (the main character) explores the stories of the women she's been in her life and ends up being an amalgamation of all of them is so beautifully portrayed. The emotion of millions of people live within these pages and each one has a way of affecting us. I love this book with all my heart. I think of the Palestinian people every day and I pray that we see an end to the occupation and a Free Palestine in my lifetime.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.