Ibtisam Azem

The inspirations behind The Book of Disappearance, and how I wrote it 

The novel is about the sudden disappearance of Palestinians and the reverberations in Israel. It explores the intersection of memory and history and reclaiming one’s past. I was listening to an interview with an Israeli politician who made false claims about the equality Palestinians enjoyed in Jerusalem and all the privileges they had. It wasn’t surprising, but I was upset that the interviewer never challenged him. It made me angry, and I started to write an article. I remembered how Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had once said when he was the minister of defence that he wished that he would wake up one day and find that the sea had swallowed Gaza. I remembered that the Israeli historian, Benny Morris, had expressed his regret that the Israelis did not finish the job (and expel all Palestinians) back in 1948. I then thought, what would the Israelis do if Palestinians were to disappear? That’s when the idea of the novel was born. 

It took me about three years to write the book, which included research and interviews that go hand in hand with writing. I start out by outlining and sketching until I reach a point where I’m living in the world of my characters. I start writing but go back to reading and research to fill gaps and add necessary details and there are always pleasant surprises that take me beyond my plan. It’s a dynamic process. I wanted to make sure that I give enough space to characters with whose politics I disagreed and have them be three-dimensional. 

As difficult as the subject is for me personally, I had to enjoy the process and withstand the hellish world I had created. Sarcasm had to be injected for that purpose. I knew that the conceit of the novel was unique but wanted to make sure that I translated it creatively. The fear of not doing so was there, of course. After seven drafts, I felt that I was on the right path and was close to the finish line of the marathon. In writing I always try to unleash the internal rebellious child who sees the world differently and refuses to be tamed and disciplined by its institutions. 

The book that made me fall in love with reading  

It wasn’t a single book, but the group of Palestinian poets and novelists who taught us our history and collective memory through their works. Our school curricula were curated by the Israeli state and our own history, as Palestinians, was silenced. In our Hebrew literature classes, we had to read Zionist literature which spoke of our homeland as empty land. This was antithetical to the oral memory and history I heard at home from my mother’s family who were internally displaced from Jaffa during the Nakba in 1948. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, before the advent of the internet. I was introduced to Palestinian literature outside of school. Writers and poets like Emile Habibi, Fadwa Tuqan, Ghassan Kanafani, and Mahmoud Darwish, among others, shaped my worldview and helped me understand my homeland and people’s history. Later, when I studied German literature, reading Wolfgang Borchert and Kafka was transformative and influenced how I understood reading and writing. 

The book that changed the way I think about the world  

Years ago, when I was living in Berlin, I read Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions (in a German translation). It’s about an unnamed city where one day, people stop dying. It changed the way I viewed and dealt with death. 

A book originally written in Arabic that I’d recommend to English-language readers   

Any work by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. In particular his novella Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, translated by Barbara Harlow and Karen E. Riley, and Men in the Sun, translated by Hilary Kilpatrick.  

The International Booker-nominated book everyone should read  

The Stone of Laughter by the Lebanese novelist, Hoda Barakat, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015, for her entire body of work. 

Sinan Antoon 

The inspiration and process behind my translation of The Book of Disappearance  

I choose works that I find exceptionally powerful and haunting and that I feel must be shared. I read The Book of Disappearance once Ibtisam finished writing it when it was still an unpublished manuscript in Arabic. I was stunned by its beauty and told her that I wanted to translate it as soon as I had the time. I was teaching and finishing a book of my own. I read it again when it was published. The translation took me a year and a half. 

The book that made me fall in love with reading  

Aside from football, reading was the most pleasurable activity in my childhood. I grew up in the pre-digital age and before the omnipresence of screens and satellite channels. It was mesmerising to be engrossed in a book and find oneself in other places and times, inhabiting other subjectivities, and living other lives vicariously. It wasn’t one book, but a series of books that enchanted me early on. So much so that I neglected my schoolbooks and homework. I remember enjoying Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities, Dumas’ The Black Tulip, both of which I read in Arabic, and the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, amongst others. 

The book that made me want to become a translator   

I grew up in a household where my father and aunts spoke a dialect of Aramaic amongst them, especially when they discussed subjects they thought we, children, shouldn’t hear or understand. But they spoke Arabic with us. As a child, this intrigued me and bothered me. I went around asking about the meaning of words and phrases and jotting them down in a notebook. It was disappointing to learn later that these ‘adult’ conversations were not as exciting as I’d imagined. So, I was already translating early on. I studied English literature at the University of Baghdad and translation was a minor. After moving to the United States, I pursued graduate work on Arabic literature, but in an Anglophone setting, of course. My research always requires translating poetry and prose from Arabic. A worthy literary text ‘stays in mourning until it is translated’ and continues its afterlife in another language. 

The book I’m reading at the moment  

I am rereading Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald for a course I’m teaching on the poetics and politics of memory. There is a distinct pleasure in rereading books such as these. It’s as haunting and visceral every time.  

A work of fiction originally written in Arabic that I’d recommend to English-language readers 

I always recommend the works of Abdulrahman Munif (1933-2004). He is one of my favourite writers and intellectuals. His epic quintet, Cities of Salt, still stands in a league of its own. It traces and chronicles the devastating effects brought about by colonial modernity and the discovery of oil on a place and its inhabitants. A poetic and prophetic work. 

The International Booker-nominated book everyone should read 

I highly recommend Compass by Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell. It was shortlisted in 2017. Another book that I love is Juan Goytisolo’s Count Julien, translated by Helen Lane. Goytisolo was nominated for his entire oeuvre in 2011. 

Why is translated fiction so appealing to a new generation of English-language readers?   

We should ask AI! I’m joking, of course. This is one statistic that is not depressing in these dystopian times. I’m speculating here, but perhaps this age group is relatively less insulated and less parochial, in general, and more hospitable to other narratives and the dazzling richness of other cultures.