Author of
Against The Loveless World (Atria, 2020)
The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2016)
Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010)
susan abulhawa is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. She was born to refugees of the Six-Day War of 1967, when her family's land was seized and Israel captured what remained of Palestine. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010), translated into 30 languages, has sold over a million copies worldwide and is considered a classic in Palestinian literature. Her other novels include The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Against the Loveless World (Simon & Schuster, 2020), an Aspen Words Literary Prize and Atheneum Prize finalist and winner of the Arab American Book Award and the Palestine Book Award, along with the poetry collection, My Voice Sought the Wind (Just World Books, 2013). abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian children.
susan abulhawa
Books by susan
Against the Loveless World (Atria, 2020)
2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
2020 Palestine Book Awards Winner
2021 Arab American Museum Award for Fiction
Long-listed for Rathsbones Folio Prize
Finalist for the 2020 Athenaeum of Philadelphia Literary Award
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Nahr’s subversive humor and moral ambiguity will resonate with fans of My Sister, The Serial Killer, and her dark, contemporary struggle places her as the perfect sister to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
Written with Susan Abulhawa’s distinctive “richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant” (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel presents a searing, darkly funny, and wholly unique portrait of a Palestinian woman who refuses to be a victim.
PRAISE
“This utterly compelling novel of love, passion, and politics is also a story of personal and revolutionary awakening. Susan Abulhawa weaves a thrilling account of Nahr and her life—from young girl to independent woman—into the larger tapestry of Palestinian dispossession and resistance.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer
“Susan Abulhawa possesses the heart of a warrior; she looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us, who are too often oblivious. A major writer of our time, to read Abulhawa is to begin to understand not simply the misinformation we have received for decades about what has gone on in Palestine and the Middle East, but to come to terms with our own resistance to feeling the terror of our own fear of Truth.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
“A thrilling, defiant novel. Abulhawa’s latest novel reads as a riot act against oppression, misogyny, and shame.”
—Fatima Bhutto, author of The Runaways
Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010, reissued with a new introduction by the Author, 2025)
A new 15th Anniversary edition of the beloved classic — with over 1 million copies sold worldwide, translated into 28 languages
“Timeless in its truth.”—Fattima Bhutto”
”Powerful and passionate.”—Michael Palin
“A novel to savor.”—Maureen Corrigan
“Relevant, powerful, emotional and vivid.”—Bidisha Mamata
“Affects me emotionally in a way only great novels can.”—Henning Mankell
Mornings in Jenin is a heart-wrenching multi-generational account of one family's struggle and survival through the decades before and after Zionist colonization and theft of Palestine. Carrying us from Ein Hod to Jenin to Jerusalem, to Lebanon, then to the anonymity of America and finally back to Occupied Palestine. it is a novel of vital importance, “[affirming] all that is enduring and valuable in the undefeated human spirit” (Hanan Ashrawi).
PRAISE
“A heart-shattering novel, timeless in its truth. Every page resounds with the profound injustice done to Palestine, every page shimmers with a promise of hope, both breathed to life by susan abulhawa’s masterful writing.”—Fatima Bhutto, author of The Runaways
"Never before have I read such a fascinating novel about Palestine and Israel. It gives insight and affects me emotionally in a way only great novels can.”—Henning Mankell, author of the Kurt Wallander mystery novels
"A powerful and passionate insight into what many Palestinians have had to endure since the state of Israel was created. susan abulhawa guides us through traumatic events with anger and great tenderness too, creating unforgettable images of a world in which humanity and inhumanity, selflessness and selfishness, love and hate grow so close to each other.” —Michael Palin, actor and philanthropist
“In both its specific Palestinian content and its larger human dimension, this novel is at once a challenge to complacency and ignorance as well as an affirmation of all that is enduring and valuable in the undefeated human spirit.”—Hanan Ashrawi, Palestinian political and civic leader and author of This Side of Peace
“When we grow numb to horror, when our minds slam shut in shock and denial, sometimes a story can slip to reawaken our humanity. This is that story, never more relevant, and my heart is stronger for reading it.”—Laline Paull, author of Women’s Prize shortlisted Pod
“Relevant, powerful, emotional and vivid, [Mornings in Jenin] is now an essential must-read for anyone who cares about the state of the world.”—Bidisha Mamata, broadcaster and critic
“Luminous . . . The re-issue is especially timely as the dominant Western narrative concerning Israel’s land theft and dehumanisation of Palestinians is challenged by the world’s close-up view of genocide in Gaza.”—Victoria Brittain, author of Love and Resistance in the Films of Mai Masri
“Achingly beautiful, a modern Palestinian classic.”—Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa
“Piercing, lyrical and unfailingly moving, [Mornings in Jenin] is the multi-generational story of a Palestinian family . . . Every character, Jewish or Palestinian, is drawn with great nuance—even tenderness—paradoxically illuminating the evils of the Zionist cause, its greed, its relentless quest for power . . . a most extraordinary journey through history and human emotions.”—Nii Ayikwei Parkes, author of Tail of the Blue Bird and Azúcar
" . . . still has a lasting impact on me. A story that I once read, and turned out to be my reality as well."—Plestia Alaqad, journalist
"An indelible family saga of resilience and humanity in the face of colonial injustice, Mornings in Jenin is as timely and urgent today as it was when it first debuted. With an eye for historical detail and a subtle grasp of emotional truth, susan abulhawa writes with integrity and grace. If you read only one novel about Palestine this year, let it be this one.”—Mai Al-Nakib, author of An Unlasting Home
The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2016)
In the small Palestinian farming village of Beit Daras, the women of the Baraka family inspire awe. Nazmiyeh is brazen and fiercely protective of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam, with her mismatched eyes, and of their mother, Um Mahmoud, known for the fearsome djinni that sometimes possesses her. When the family is forced by the newly formed State of Israel to leave their ancestral home, only Nazmiyeh and her brother survive the long road to Gaza. Amidst the violence and fragility of the refugee camp, Nazmiyeh builds a family, navigates crises, and nurtures what remains of Beit Daras's community. But her brother continues his exile's journey to America, where, upon his death, his granddaughter Nur grows up alone, in a different kind of exile, the longing for family and roots eventually beckoning her to Gaza.
Internationally bestselling author Susan Abulhawa's powerful new novel explores the legacy of dispossession across continents and generations. With devastatingly clear-eyed vision of political and personal trauma, The Blue Between Sky and Water is the story of flawed yet profoundly courageous women, of separation and heartache, endurance and renewal.
PRAISE
"The story Susan Abulhawa tells in this marvelous novel is hard to bear but impossible to ignore. Her vision is precise, courageous, and dazzling." —Teju Cole
"Abulhawa's prose is luminous; her control of a complex weaving of narrative voices-young and old, male and female, magical and real-is masterful." ―The Independent
"[Abulhawa] is a fine observer of female kinship ... A powerful read." ― Financial Times
"Abulhawa surprises us by continually unfolding new stories ...These are secrets we need to know, secrets that will educate us about ourselves, and Gaza. " ―The Guardian
"Fierce and powerful and deeply moving, you will want to read it again and again." ― Marxist Review
"A family saga with global reach, these stories of fortune tellers, fighters, little girls and old women, jump off the page and into the soul and reach far beyond any headline or statistic, past the head, to the heart." ― Laleh Khadivi, author of The Age of Orphans and The Walking
"Magical ... The way the story is told is haunting. It pulls you in and you want to never emerge." ― The Asian Age