Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, Sinan Antoon (Translator)
- 256 pages, Paperback
- Published July , 2019 by Syracuse University Publications in Continuing Education
I think this book has been on my TBR for a year and a half, but the thing is projects for the podcast, and library books always take priority. When I was researching speculative fiction and the war on Terror (for an article published right here on this blog.) I was accidentally finding unrelated spec fiction from the middle east that I was curious about. One of those books was The Book of Disappearance which seemed important to me.
The concept is not the most original, the 2004 film a Day Without a Mexican was a more pointed mockumentary to express how much of our culture depends on Mexican labor. I believe there were news stories constantly around that time that explored this idea.
I have no clue if Azem saw those or was inspired by them. I know nothing about her or this novel besides what is in between the covers. I was interested in several reasons first of which is translated fiction from Palestine. I would love to read more fiction from that diaspora. While the blurbs compare this novel to magic realism that seems weak to me as this novel is a speculative novel in general. The author is a novelist and journalist and I get that she may not have written anything else genre, but let’s be clear, it is a fantasy. In a sense, it is the ultimate colonial fantasy.
The story of all the Palestinian people disappearing one night and what happens in the country afterward. Set in Tel Aviv and Jaffa Azem uses a neat narrative trick to keep the Palestinian voice in the novel. Half of the novel is told in journal entries by Alaa. Early in the book before the “Event”, his grandmother dies and he starts to write journal entries to her.
The main character is Alaa’s friend Ariel, an Israeli investigative journalist who is exploring what happened to the people in Palestine. His question was, what happened to his friend? At first, the people of Israel think it is a strike, then they worry the rest of the Arab world will blame them. As Ariel investigates, he learns more and thinks deeper about his friend as he reads the journal and learns about him.
Ariel is liberal, not precisely a militant Zionist but believes in the mission of the nation to protect the Jewish people from global antisemitism. Alaa is haunted by the relocation his grandmother lived through. There are no good guys or bad guys but I believe those ideologically locked will view this novel through their lens no matter Azem’s intention.
I personally like that the novel presented all views fairly. From a storytelling perspective, I liked that Azem used the disappearance of a prisoner in prison 48 as the real indication that something supernatural happened. The prisoners are not going on strike. “He stood perplexed in the middle, looking at the walls. As if searching for an ant, roach, or something hiding in there, but not for Waleed. He began to sweat, felt his temperature rise, and could hear his heart pounding.” This was a very smart way to make this reveal.
Like Day Without a Mexican, there are long build-ups of people waiting to board buses that don’t show up, and people at hospitals waiting for bathes because so many of the jobs are suddenly not being done. There are certainly people who would celebrate, and there are people who don’t.
This book does what Science Fiction does best explore issues in context not available through reality. Most engaging for me were the subtle but heartfelt looks at life in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The fantastical event of the novel is the hook that pulls the story but the real heart of the novel comes in those journal entries. For a generation of people, they felt like those they and their world disappeared. It didn’t feel like science fiction, but a nightmare. The idea for a novel like this, about a conflict like this is for the two sides to see each other. I can’t think of a better reason for speculative fiction.
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