Against the Loveless World

Palestine Book Award Winner

Longlist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize ​"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." --Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author In this "beautiful...urgent" (The New York Times) novel, a young Palestinian woman fights for a better life for her family as she travels as a refugee throughout the Middle East. 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 1970s 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 finds a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation. Written with Susan Abulhawa's distinctive "richly detailed, beautiful, and resonant" (Publishers Weekly) prose, this powerful novel is "a major literary contribution that further cements Abulhawa's status as one of the most important writers of our generation" (Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody).