Against the Loveless World

Nahr is a Palestinian growing up in Kuwait. She is also (years late) a political prisoner held in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. The contrast between these two timelines is very effective: outside, Nahr's life is constantly imperiled by History: the struggle and trauma of being a refugee in a relatively hostile country, of negotiating borders that isolate people from their family and their land, the war in Iraq, the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait, then later in the book life under Occupation in the West Bank, the first Intifada, the Israeli repression. Things keep happening and make normality impossible. Inside, it is just Nahr, a toilette, and the camera that surveils her. Very occasionally an obnoxious journalist, or a prison guard. Time loses all meaning. These were, arguably, the strongest pages. This is worked very well.

What worked less / I didn't love: (1) gender roles, goddam it Susan, is really the only conceivable role for women freedom fighters to distract guards by waving their butts? (2) instructive vignettes - OK, I do understand you want to educate your audience, but sometimes these were really heavy-handed (3) I totally understand wanting to be contrarian, I also understand being annoyed by Western hypocrisy, but don't think that with the benefit of hindsight is possible to write a book about political prisoners whilst fangirling about Saddam.

The reveal is part of the book, because despite the fact we begin with the narrator, Nahr, in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. We don't know why she is there, nor her earlier recollections give a pointer to them. But how the story is told almost everything in her life recounted is important to the eventual conclusion. At first the recollections, from years living as a Palestinian in Kuwait, are quite dispassionate. Given the nature of some of what happens, content warning includes sexual violence, this feels quite correct. The tone used resonated with another book I'd read and was struggling to think which? Something about Leila Khaled maybe? No I realised it was Margrit Schiller's in my mind similarly worded description of how she, maybe more, actively fell into the RAF and of being imprisoned. Schiller's description of prison and solidarity confinement is much darker than in this book incidentally. History, and politics, impinge on the life of Nahr, who otherwise wouldn't have been drawn to have an interest in them, nor possibly Palestine itself. But it is love, and a man, that are also important in this too. Part of me feels disappointed that it has to be a man that actually catalyses a lot of this. Right up to the strength found through him in the court room. Different, loving, caring, relationships with people are central to Nahr's character, and drive her and the novel. Set truly for someone in the Palestinian diaspora against a loveless world.