Bologna Children’s Book Fair

Four Arab illustrators will be taking part in the 52nd Bologna Children’s Book Fair, running from  March 30 till April 2. The illustrators come from the UAE, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt and have been participating in the Warsha initiative set up by Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature, which aims to "foster talent in the Arabic children’s and young adult …

Returning to Haifa

Ghassan Kanafani's novella, Returning to Haifa (1969), tells the story of Said and Safeyya, who fled their home in Haifa during the 1948 Nakba. In the chaos and violence of their escape,  their five-month old son Khaldun is left behind. Twenty years later when the Mandelbaum Gate is opened they return to Haifa,  "to see" as …

All That’s Left to You

Ghassan Kanafani's novella All That's Left to You is more obviously allegorical than Men in the Sun and yet somehow also more complex, more psychological -  echoes of Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury have been noted. The story, probably too short to be a novella, tells the story of three characters - Hamid, his …

Men in The Sun

Men in the Sun (1963) by Ghassan Kanafani is a short novel that follows three Palestinian refugees, Abu Qais, Asad and Marwan, as they attempt to cross from Basra to Kuwait. All three Palestinians had left refugee camps. Abu Qais, an old man, left to improve the lot of his family, Assad, a young man, …