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Published 4 April 2025
ISBN 9781923058620
Format Trade Paperback
Extent 240pp
AU Price $34.99
NZ Price $40.00

The Book of Disappearance

Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize



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Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, this critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.

What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day?

The Book of Disappearance is set in contemporary Tel Aviv. Alaa is a young Palestinian man who is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. His Jewish neighbour and friend, Ariel, is a journalist who believes in Israel’s national myth but is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He begins to search for clues about why Alaa and the Palestinians have vanished. Their stories, and the stories of the ordinary people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.

Ibtisam Azem’s spare and evocative novel is an unforgettable glimpse into contemporary Palestine as it grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory.

‘5 stars. Rich, rewarding, lyrical, and vital. A stunning achievement…Without a doubt, one of the year’s best novels.’ GLAM Adelaide

‘A powerful novel, enduring in the issues it exposes…A novel that will stay in your mind, [providing] a compelling case for dialogue about a story that is ongoing.’ ReadPlus

‘I love [The Book of Disappearance] for [its] narrative intimacy, for the questions [it] pose[s], and for [its] unflinching accounts and fierce recriminations of culture, identity and history.’ Sarah Ayoub

‘A powerful novel, enduring in the issues it exposes…A novel that will stay in your mind, [providing] a compelling case for dialogue about a story that is ongoing.’ ReadPlus

Published 4 April 2025
ISBN 9781923058620
Format Trade Paperback
Extent 240pp
AU Price $34.99
NZ Price $40.00

About the author

Ibtisam Azem

Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, based in New York. She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in 1948 Nakba. She lived in Jerusalem before moving to Germany and later to the US. Azem has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014). Her first short story collection, City of Strangers, is forthcoming in Arabic in the summer of 2025.