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Atef Abu Saif’s A Suspended Life draws attention to the people trying to lead a normal life in Gaza
A Gaza novelist who was shortlisted for a prestigious Arabic literature prize but couldn’t attend the announcement ceremony because of alleged Hamas harassment, says he learnt storytelling from his refugee grandmother, who recounted happier times.
As a boy, Atef Abu Saif began writing down his grandmother Aisheh’s stories about life as the wife of an orange merchant in the Mediterranean city of Jaffa – before her family fled during the war over Israel’s creation in 1948. She ended up in the Gaza Strip’s Jebaliya refugee camp, 70 kilometres to the south.
Abu Saif, 41, has continued writing since then, through two Palestinian uprisings, clashes between rival political factions and three full-fledged wars pitting the territory’s militant Hamas rulers against Israel. His most recent novel, A Suspended Life, tells the stories of several Jebaliya residents and their struggle to carve out normal lives amid the recurring mayhem.
“The main message is that life in Gaza is a break between wars,” Abu Saif said in a recent interview in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “This break deserves to be lived.”
The novel is one of six shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for 2015, an award for contemporary fiction run with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation in Britain and funded by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. It is widely known as the “Arabic Booker”, and this year’s US$50,000 (Dh183,647) prize will be awarded in May at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.
Source: www.thenational.ae