352 pages
English language
Published April 9, 2010 by Bloomsbury.
Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.
The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch's bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is …
Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. This is the Palestinian story, told as never before, through four generations of a single family.
The very precariousness of existence in the camps quickens life itself. Amal, the patriarch's bright granddaughter, feels this with certainty when she discovers the joys of young friendship and first love and especially when she loses her adored father, who read to her daily as a young girl in the quiet of the early dawn. Through Amal we get the stories of her twin brothers, one who is kidnapped by an Israeli soldier and raised Jewish; the other who sacrifices everything for the Palestinian cause. Amal’s own dramatic story threads between the major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades; it is one of love and loss, of childhood, marriage, and parenthood, and finally of the need to share her history with her daughter, to preserve the greatest love she has.
I knew it would be harrowing; how could it not be? And didn’t have the energy to read about such deep and intractable violence. But it is a good book, the latter half in particular; about grief and motherhood and fragments of hope.
I have really enjoyed this book. A dear friend of mine offered to me and it brought back so many memories of my time in Palestine...
A book on what it helplessness means in a world where power rules. Yes, probably too much of Palestinian history experienced through one fairly small family, but this is not what is important. The important thing is that there are really no bad people in this novel, excepting anonymous snipers and soldiers we know nothing about. All, both Palestinians and Israelis, have been terribly victimized. The Israelis then acquire power to victimize others and do so as part of a preferred political arrangement. The Palestinians, pretty much as Jews earlier, do not have such power so are victimized over and over again. I can see two possible conclusions here - either people should become obsessed with power and build their lives around it or there must be ways to protect the defenseless, even when politically inconvenient. Somehow I have a hard time imagining many people willing to live in a …
A book on what it helplessness means in a world where power rules. Yes, probably too much of Palestinian history experienced through one fairly small family, but this is not what is important. The important thing is that there are really no bad people in this novel, excepting anonymous snipers and soldiers we know nothing about. All, both Palestinians and Israelis, have been terribly victimized. The Israelis then acquire power to victimize others and do so as part of a preferred political arrangement. The Palestinians, pretty much as Jews earlier, do not have such power so are victimized over and over again. I can see two possible conclusions here - either people should become obsessed with power and build their lives around it or there must be ways to protect the defenseless, even when politically inconvenient. Somehow I have a hard time imagining many people willing to live in a world resulting from preference for the first choice.
Sorry about not referring to the politics of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the reason is that the book is really not that political. It is about regular, rather apolitical, people who had to deal with results of political decisions which they never really understood. The kind of people we usually talk about when we talk about human rights and their violations.
More of a 3.5 than a 4, but that's goodreads' fault, not mine.
I typically avoid reading books about Palestine as for most of my adult life I've worked full-time at pro-Palestine non-profits and this privileged white boy can only take so many stories of indescribable tragedy and loss at a time.
For me, that's at first what Mornings in Jenin started out like. Traditional characters being exposed to the foundational events of the Palestinian experience - the Nakba, the occupation, refugees - and all the collected indignities and brutalities that go along with it. The clear injection of political points into the text really disrupted the flow through much of the first half of the book.
However, things picked up in the second half, when the story focused more on the characters and less on the continual calamities that have befallen the Palestinians. I think Abulhawa does a great …
More of a 3.5 than a 4, but that's goodreads' fault, not mine.
I typically avoid reading books about Palestine as for most of my adult life I've worked full-time at pro-Palestine non-profits and this privileged white boy can only take so many stories of indescribable tragedy and loss at a time.
For me, that's at first what Mornings in Jenin started out like. Traditional characters being exposed to the foundational events of the Palestinian experience - the Nakba, the occupation, refugees - and all the collected indignities and brutalities that go along with it. The clear injection of political points into the text really disrupted the flow through much of the first half of the book.
However, things picked up in the second half, when the story focused more on the characters and less on the continual calamities that have befallen the Palestinians. I think Abulhawa does a great job in the latter sections in letting her characters tell the story, through very touching and emotional writing. It seemed her characters had more say, even though they were still exposed to events beyond their control.
A very good first novel. A very good novel about Palestine, which captures not only the historical events, but contributes to an understanding of how those events impacted specific individuals in a myriad of ways...a lot of humanizing spread amply around to all sides, which I think is an important inclusion.
