Nothing but love for Susan Abulhawa and “Against the loveless world”. Nahr, the protagonist, inspires me deeply. Her strength, her resilience and her love fill me with great admiration and ignite a fiery resistance to injustice within me. As I read, I am drawn into her world: a Palestinian woman held hostage in an Israeli prison. The story is about her life before her imprisonment, shaped by displacement, resistance and the brutal reality of Israeli colonisation of Palestine. Although the story is fictional, the context in which it takes place is an undeniable truth. I have never felt so strongly about all characters in a book but since the story reads from Nahr’s point of view and she loves all people surrounding her so deeply, not in spite of but because of their flaws, you grow to love them too. This is a love story that expands far beyond the love of two people (even though the central love story is undeniably beautiful) but entails family, friends, neighbours, countries, past, present and future.

Having read this book as my first novel of 2025, I wish we all have at least one resolution in 2025, and that is to do everything in our power to save Gaza and free Palestine.

Thank you for this precious book, dear Susan Abulhawa. Everyone should read this. 

#freepalestine