“Every now and again a literary work changes the way people think. Abulhawa, 2003 winner of the Edna Andrade Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Award, has crafted a brilliant first novel about Palestine. The book opens in the 1940s, in the small village of Ein Hod, before the forced relocation of residents to the Jenin refugee camp. Once in the settlement, a young girl named Amal Abulheja becomes the story's focus. Through Amal's eyes, readers see the daily routines of generations of refugees and glimpse the indignities imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli army; they œll also see people fall in love, have babies, and develop an appreciation for poetry and scholarship. While some readers might see this novel as anti-Semitic, it is not. Indeed, Abulhawa goes to great lengths to highlight the universal desire of all people for a homeland. Furthermore, Abulhawa's compassion for American victims of 9/11 and for those who suffered in the Holocaust illuminates what it means to be humane and spiritually generous. The Pennsylvania-based Abulhawa, herself Palestinian, has crafted an intensely beautiful fictionalized history that should be read by both politicians and those interested in contemporary politics. Highly recommended.
-Editor, Library Journal
“The Scar of David is a haunting song that scales the dizzying heights and extremes of our profoundest feelings and emotions joy, tenderness, emptiness, self-loathing, exile and the inconsolable longing for home, loneliness, betrayal, vengeance, madness, unbearable loss wrung from the brutally indiscriminate fist of a war and occupation that has disfigured not only the victims of Israeli imperialism, but the perpetrators themselves, and the conscience of international community that insists on averting its eyes from the smoldering fate of a people forsaken and damned. Masterfully weaving actual historic events through a fictional tale of a family across three generations, Susan Abulhawa's novel is ultimately a message of transcendent humanity and love as deep as the oceans.
-Sunil K. Sharma, Editor and Publisher of Dissident Voice
“Abulhawa: Pathos and mastery enables the reader to taste, smell and grasp the chronicles of Palestine as if one is actually there in the presence of her exceptional characters and distinctive storylines. Lovely and heartrending, this story is a much read for those who wish to not only understand the catastrophe of the Palestinians with their heads but also with their hearts.
-Ramzy Baroud, Palestinian-American journalist and author
Editor: PalestineChronicle.com
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“Every now and again a literary work changes the way people think. Abulhawa, 2003 winner of the Edna Andrade Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Award, has crafted a brilliant first novel about Palestine. The book opens in the 1940s, in the small village of Ein Hod, before the forced relocation of residents to the Jenin refugee camp.Read
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