4th Sep 2015 7:00 pm Chapter One Bookshop, 19 Lever Street, Manchester M1 1BY
Palestinian author Atef Abu Saif will be reading from his two most recent books at Chapter One bookshop (a new bookshop in the northern quarter on the corner of Dale Street and Lever Street)
“Reading from ‘The Drone Eats With Me’ and ‘The Book of Gaza’.
Join us to see Gazan author Atef Abu Saif in the UK, as he reads from his two latest works for Comma Press.
This year Comma published The Drone Eats With Me; a harrowing, elegant account of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza last summer. Detailing the day-to-day struggles of his young family as they negotiate life in a war zone, this moving and important work includes a foreword by Noam Chomsky. The book has been shortlisted for the MEMO Palestine Book Award 2015.
Praise for The Drone Eats With Me
Eloquently tells the human story behind the awful statistics… chilling’ – The Independent
‘His cool, spare prose only highlights the extreme stress and horror of living under constant bombardment.’ – The New Statesman.
Atef will also read an excerpt from his contribution to The Book of Gaza – which he also edited- a short story anthology containing ten short stories from Gazan authors.
Praise for The Book of Gaza
‘A welcome reminder of the universality of human relations’ – The Guardian
‘Tales that reflect that depth and the variety and universality of the Gazan experience’ – The Irish Times.
Atef Abu Saif was born in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1973. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Birzeit and a Master’s degree from the University of Bradford. He received a PhD in Political and Social Science from the European University Institute in Florence. He is the author of five novels: Shadows in the Memory (2007), The Tale of the Harvest Night (1999), Snowball (2000), The Salty Grape of Paradise (2003, 2006) and A Suspended Life (2014), which was shortlisted for the 2015 International Prize for Arab Fiction (IPAF). He has also published two collections of short stories – Everything is Normal (2004) and Still Life: Stories from Gaza Time (2013) – as well as several books on politics. He is a regular contributor to a number of Palestinian and Arabic newspapers and journals. In 2014 Atef edited The Book of Gaza, as part of Comma’s ‘City in Short Fiction’ series, and in 2015 released a diary of the Israeli