On Tuesday, the Department of Literary Arts and the Center for Middle East Studies hosted Palestinian novelist and journalist Ibtisam Azem for a literature reading and conversation at the McCormack Family Theater. During the conversation — which was moderated by Ahmad Abu Ahmad GS, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature — Azem discussed her two published novels, Palestinian history and the strength of memory.
Azem opened the talk by reading excerpts from her 2014 novel “The Book of Disappearance,” which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025.
The chosen passage was a memoir entry written by the protagonist –– a fictional Palestinian man named Alaa Assaf who was grieving the death of his grandmother in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Azem read from the text in Arabic before reading an English translation.
“She preferred to die in Jaffa than to leave. Whenever she mentioned Jaffa’s name, she would take a deep breath, as if the city had suddenly betrayed her and scorched her heart,” Azem read. “At that moment, when I saw that her body was a corpse gazing at the sea, I realized that there were so many questions I hadn’t yet asked. Death and time beat me to it.”
“The Book of Disappearance” leans into magical realism by imagining a Tel Aviv where the Palestinian population vanishes overnight, echoing Azem’s family’s real experiences during the Nakba — the mass displacement of Palestinians in the period surrounding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
When discussing war, people often “get stuck on the one level of numbers,” she added. These statistics are significant, but as a writer she said she must “stay behind and live with the people and live with their struggles, inner worlds, doubts (and) fears.”
Before concluding the talk with an audience Q&A, Azem read an excerpt from her 2011 debut novel “The Sleep Thief,” which was translated into English earlier this year. The book follows a Palestinian man named Gharib Haifawi who grows up throughout the Nakba and the first Palestinian Intifada — a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli military that lasted from 1987 to 1993.
Abu Ahmad noted that Azem’s books have a lot of speech, but they also have a lot of silence and silencing.
For Azem, this silence extends to her writing process. “Silence” is an “enormous, important part of writing,” she said. “How do you navigate silence in literature? It takes a lot of … careful reading of other people.”
“In order to have a different future, we need to know where we come from, we need to know our own history,” Azem said. To her, memory is “a tool for change” and “a strength rather than just crying on the ruins and crying on the past.”
Siwar Masannat –– a lecturer in the literary arts department –– said she invited Azem to Brown after teaching “The Book of Disappearance” in her seminar “LITR 1153G: Against Mastery.” “I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to have her on campus to interact with students,” she told The Herald.
Aya Afaneh, a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, said she had been looking to hear more about Palestinian experiences and happened to hear about Azem’s event through a flyer.
“I felt really blessed to get to hear her speak in Arabic and in English,” Afaneh said. “It was (a) really great conversation.”
Kendra Eastep is an illustration chief and a Senior Staff Writer for Arts & Culture. She is from New York City and concentrates in English and History. While she draws, she likes to drink peach tea and watch video essays.
