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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
- Author
- Nathan Thrall
- Narrator
- Peter Ganim
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publish Date
- 16 November 2023
- Run Time
- 6 hours 44 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
A gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision
Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad's fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian.
Interwoven with Abed's odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.
'A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank' The Best Books to Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Financial Times
'Brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this … when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with deep and authentic truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history' Observer
©2024 Nathan Thrall (P)2024 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank arranged around the story of a Palestinian child and a school trip that ends in tragedy following a traffic accident. Weaving together the ordinary and interwoven lives of Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants, Thrall, a Jerusalem-based author and journalist, illuminates the complex realities of one of the world’s most contested regions
Financial Times
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Nathan Thrall's book made me walk a lot. I found myself pacing around between chapters, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in order to be able to absorb the brutality, the pathos, the steely tenderness, and the sheer spectacle of the cunning and complex ways in which a state can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of the civilized world for its actions
Arundhati Roy
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The book combines heart-wrenching prose with rare political insight. It tells a deeply moving story about one tragic road accident, which illuminates the tragedy of the millions of Palestinians who live under Israeli Occupation
Yuval Noah Harari
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Thrall is one of the few writers who can combine vivid storytelling with in-depth analysis of the occupation... his expertise allows him to shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli officials and nearby settlers
New York Times
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Clear-eyed... A long and powerful book of reportage… Unflinching clarity. At a time when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history
Observer
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Magnificent… The book does what all good stories should do – it unfolds both minutely and epically at the same time. It does not moralise, and yet it does not shirk its responsibility to knock our sense of comfortable balance all to hell…. The nature of injustice is such that we may not always see it in our own times, but history will hold us accountable. That’s why Thrall’s book, and those like it, are so important
The Irish Times
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Thrall captures both the universality and the specificity of the experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation... the book builds a relentless case that this crash and the ensuing trauma must be remembered. It was all so predictable - and could easily happen again
Economist
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An important book… one that closely examines the intricacies of injustice perpetrated on the Palestinian population by the Israeli government, its systems and plenty of its Jewish citizens
Washington Post
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Reading this Middle East expert’s account of a Palestinian worker and activist and the death of his angelic 5-year-old son, Malid, is tough — and necessary. The bus accident that took the boy’s life in 2012 was caused in no small part by the neglected infrastructure that makes Palestinian Jerusalem a miserable, dangerous place to live. By narrowing the focus to one family’s loss, Thrall humanizes the consequences of systemic decay
LA Times
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A powerful evocation of a two-tiered society that treats children as potential combatants
New Yorker, Best Books Out Now
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Nathan Thrall
- Narrator
- Peter Ganim
- Duration
- 6 hours 44 minutes
- Release Date
- 16 November 2023
- ISBN
- 9781802066012
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Genre
- Reportage, journalism or collected columns, Human rights, civil rights, True stories: general, Invasion, conquest and occupation, Middle Eastern history
Synopsis
Brought to you by Penguin.LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONA gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collisionMilad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad's fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian.Interwoven with Abed's odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.'A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank' The Best Books to Understand the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Financial Times'Brims over with just the sort of compassion and understanding that is needed at a time like this … when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with deep and authentic truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history' Observer©2024 Nathan Thrall (P)2024 Penguin Audio
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