Home 5 News 5 When War Haunts Voices of Palestine: Writers in the Crossfire

When War Haunts Voices of Palestine: Writers in the Crossfire

by | Oct 26, 2023 | News

Israeli’s bombardment of Gaza has claimed the life of the Palestinian novelist and poet Hiba Abu Nada, it has been reported.  She was killed in her home south of Gaza City.  Nada, 32, was the author of Oxygen’s Not for the Dead (Dar Diwan) and won second prize in the Sharjah Award for Arabic Creativity in 2016.  A final tweet from the author shortly before her death, written in Arabic and quoted in the Bookseller, has been translated as: ‘Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quite apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.’

In the UK, Ra Page, CEO and founder of Manchester’s Comma Press, said the publisher “continues to receive distressing accounts from its authors and others in the writing community in the Gaza Strip”.  These include the deaths of multiple family members of the Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif, editor of Comma’s The Book of Gaza, in an airstrike in Gaza City.  Comma said Saif “was personally involved in the two-day search for survivors in the debris in the Tal al-Hawa region of the city, and described the ordeal, via voice memos, of digging through the rubble with his bare hands and calling out the names of those missing”.

page also says that the Palestinian Talal Abu Shawish, author of ‘Red Lights’ in Comma’s The Book of Gaza, is reporting the death of his daughter-in-law and her entire family in an Israeli airstrike further south, in Nusayrat Camp. 

As the air strikes continued, Comma said it had “yet to receive any news from a number of other authors, translators and close friends of the press”.

 

 

Recent News

17Jul
Penguin Supports Winn Amid Controversy

Penguin Supports Winn Amid Controversy

Penguin said release date of On Winter Hill would be changed in order to ‘support the author’ after allegations that Raynor Winn lied in her bestselling memoir. Author Raynor Winn’s new book has been delayed because questions about her bestselling work The Salt Path have caused her and her husband “considerable distress”, her publisher has […]

17Jul
Farshore  Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

Farshore Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

HarperCollins’ children’s imprint Farshore has acquired The Adventures of Portly the Otter: Untold Tales from the Wind in the Willows by award-winning children’s author M. G. Leonard. The book of exciting spin-off stories from the much-loved classic The Wind in the Willows, written by Kenneth Grahame and illustrated by E.H. Shepard, will publish in March […]

16Jul
Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Publishing veteran Kate Parkin, who worked for Random House and was most recently MD of the adult publishing division at Bonnier Books UK, is launching a new independent publishing house, Firefinch.  It is a co-venture with her Bonnier colleague Margaret Stead who was Bonnier publisher. Among the authors who are making the jump with them […]

Related Posts

Farshore  Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

Farshore Revives ‘Portly the Otter’

HarperCollins’ children’s imprint Farshore has acquired The Adventures of Portly the Otter: Untold Tales from the Wind in the Willows by award-winning children’s author M. G. Leonard. The book of exciting spin-off stories from the much-loved classic The Wind in the...

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Firefinch to Debut in 2026 with Star Authors

Publishing veteran Kate Parkin, who worked for Random House and was most recently MD of the adult publishing division at Bonnier Books UK, is launching a new independent publishing house, Firefinch.  It is a co-venture with her Bonnier colleague Margaret Stead who was...

Al Faya: Where History Took Its First Steps on the Sands of the Desert

Al Faya: Where History Took Its First Steps on the Sands of the Desert

In a timeless moment etched into the memory of human heritage, the sun of Sharjah rose once again on the map of the world, this time through the gateway of deep history. At its recently concluded 47th session in Paris, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee officially...

Previous Next
Close
Test Caption
Test Description goes like this