Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist based in New York
She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in 1948. She lived in Jerusalem and studied at the Hebrew University before moving to Germany and later to the US.
She has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014). The latter has been translated into English, Italian, and German, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. Her first short story collection, City of Strangers, is forthcoming in Arabic in the summer of 2025.
Azem’s short stories and essays have appeared in several anthologies and various magazines, including Evergreen Review, Journal of Palestine Studies, World Literature Today, and Jadaliyya.
Azem holds an MA in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies with minors in German and English Literature from Freiburg University, as well as an MA in Social Work from NYU.
Speculative and haunting, this is an exceptional exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography
— The 2025 judges on The Book of Disappearance
