Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

Palestine + 100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini

2 reviews

wchereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense
Palestine +100 is a collection of science fiction short stories set a hundred years after 1948 - in the year (or sometimes the decade or so leading up to) 2048. The book itself was published in 2019, and it felt especially grim to read a setting like how a major invasion took place in 2025 and changed Palestine forever. While we are collectively living through a livestreamed genocide in 2024 and people with the financial and/or military power to make actual changes cheer it on. The editor wrote, in an absolutely brilliant foreword:

The genre of science fiction has never been particularly popular among Palestinian authors; it is a luxury, to which Palestinians haven't felt they can afford to escape. The cruel present (and the traumatic past) have too firm a grip on Palestinian writers' imaginations for fanciful ventures into possible futures.

It makes sense that a fair number of stories in the collection have a plot and/or ending that reads unsatisfying incomplete or almost pointlessly tragic. They may very well be accurately reflecting the equally if not more absurd and tragic real life under occupation that Palestinians residing in ocupied Palestine go through daily.

Among the stories, N is my favourite with Song of the Birds being a close second. N imagines a future where Israel and Palestine exist on the same land in parallel universes, and only people born after such setup was created are allowed to travel back and forth; it is beautifully written, poignant and heartbreaking.
cw: suicide mention
Song of the Bird, being the first in the collection, was incredibly dark with it blurring the lines between suicide and breaking out of a life built on lies, and absolutely shocked me to my core.

The last in the collection, The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid, is one I understood the least but left the biggest impression on me. It is a messy, absurd and satirical tale that paints layers of tragedies with brutal honesty and an unsettling lightheartedness and tells of the fruitless efforts of the settlers to erase Palestine and Palestinian steadfastness in a darkly humourous way.

Palestine +100 reminded me of the appeal of science fiction and the power of using imagination to look at the present with a new perspective. I am grateful to the translators for allowing us to read some amazing stories I won't be able to comprehend otherwise, and I hope to be able to find more translated work from some of the writers here (especially Majd Kayyal and Mazen Maarouf, because WOW their minds).
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2treads's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

‘Sometimes, home is simply a matter of changing your perspective.’

This collection features stories that run the gamut when it comes to extrapolating a future for the Palestinian people and each are unique yet similar in the technology that will be created and advanced, the new ways in which walls will be built, the evolution of containment and collaboration.

But what is at the heart of all of these stories is memory of place and time. What was and is being taken, when it started and a hope for when it will end. The authors have all utilised "advanced tech" and the myriad ways in which it can be used to perpetuate violence, dispossesion, and disregard for the humanity of a group of people.

The resilience and esteem for their heritage that the Palestinian people have is inherent in every story, with emphasis placed on the passing down of historical memory and the weight it bears. How the memories of grandparents and great grandparents fuel the drive of resistance of young Palestinians today.

What stuck with me is the ways in which each story depicted acts of passive and active resistance.
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