Scan barcode
A review by lsaligmander
Palestine + 100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini
3.0
Science fiction isn’t really my thing but I found the concept of this book interesting enough to give it a try.
I found the stories to be hit or miss. Something that struck me about the collection overall was how humanly and sympathetically the Israeli characters portrayed, even though the amorphous government in the stories did horrible things.
My two favorite stories were the first (about the Gaza suicide and freedom of digital return) because the idea of creating a world made of collective memory and the impossibility or keeping the bad memories from seeping in seemed to mirror the present in an eerie way. I also liked the last story (about the mud ball kid), because of the magical realism and how it managed to hit home in a striking way despite having so many elements of fantasy.
I think overall that’s what I did appreciate about the book, despite its shortcomings: that it used technology and fantasy as a way of conveying the present through analogy, which allowed an outsider like me to see it differently.
I found the stories to be hit or miss. Something that struck me about the collection overall was how humanly and sympathetically the Israeli characters portrayed, even though the amorphous government in the stories did horrible things.
My two favorite stories were the first (about the Gaza suicide and freedom of digital return) because the idea of creating a world made of collective memory and the impossibility or keeping the bad memories from seeping in seemed to mirror the present in an eerie way. I also liked the last story (about the mud ball kid), because of the magical realism and how it managed to hit home in a striking way despite having so many elements of fantasy.
I think overall that’s what I did appreciate about the book, despite its shortcomings: that it used technology and fantasy as a way of conveying the present through analogy, which allowed an outsider like me to see it differently.