Every Moment Is a Life

“An incredibly powerful book. [Every Moment is a Life] will surely be a reference for generations to come.”
—Adam Horowitz, Mondoweiss

“An astonishing anthology. Heartrending and indelible, this is a vital account of Palestinians’ horrific reality.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“A tour de force. The beautifully compiled book’s descriptions of the torturous nature of the routine during genocide is a particularly notable inclusion. Gaza, in these pages, is not only where people are being killed. It is where people are still naming babies, mending shoes, boiling coffee, missing rooms, loving the dead and writing. To produce these stories, revise them over broken connections, and live long enough to tell them was itself resistance. Not resistance as slogan, but as breath held against erasure. The reader is left with beauty that cannot absolve itself, and testimony that refuses to be reduced to pain alone.”
—Middle East Eye

“Achingly rich with sensory details of a land being made increasingly and traumatically barren, this is not a project to make sense of brutality but to compel witness to it. An electrifying, if harrowing, anthology of Palestinian voices that will define a generation.”
—Kirkus

“Abulhawa’s collection is what the American reader needs to read today to understand what the US government has enabled, and continues to enable, Israel to do in Gaza.”
—Imad Harb, Arab Center Washington DC
“Every Moment is a Life marks a monumental work of witness, solidarity and love amidst total horror. Editors susan abulhawa and Huzama Habayeb, both spectacular writers themselves, have compiled a vital account of what two years of genocide actually means, not in some abstract geopolitical sense, but directly from the people who have had to live through this evil. The stories here, detailed and fully felt in a way only lived experience allows, are of survival, of strength, of the most fundamental humanness in the face of every conceivable indignity. It is impossible to read this anthology and not come away rearranged.”
—Omar El-Akkad, National Book Award winner of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Finally, we experience writing about the genocide in Gaza from the individuals surviving it, the people who have endured the unimaginable. In heartbreaking specificity that transports us to this once-beautiful place, the stories in this collection render the frustration that comes with waiting in food lines to the ache of making it through cold nights without shelter, and the constant, imminent risk of death – all juxtaposed against the simple pleasure of a Nescafé in the midst of such horror. These writers show us what can be preserved when everything else is lost—human dignity, and an undying need to be heard.”
—Zaina Arafat, author of You Exist Too Much and Our Arab: Diaspora and its Aftermath

“A poignant, searing collection that captures not only the unbearable reality of Palestinians living through genocide, but also their feelings, memories, hopes, and thoughts. Each essay bears witness in its own way - raw, intimate, and impossible to forget. I often read in tears, gripped by experiences that reach far beyond what images or headlines can convey.”
—Mahmoud Khalil

“This stunning anthology offers readers an intimate glimpse of life in Gaza from the voices experiencing the genocide firsthand. Insisting on the continuance of life, breath by breath and line by line, these writers narrate the unfathomable and emerge defiant, despite the “terrifying blast of shelling and the crash of collapsing buildings.” What makes this collection singular is its preservation of Arabic alongside English. The languages breathe together, holding the urgent, necessary voices within. These stories demand reckoning, particularly from Western audiences. Everyone must read Every Moment Is a Life.”
—Noor Hindi, author of Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow and co-editor of Heaven Looks Like Us: A Palestinian Poetry Anthology

“Susan Abulhawa, a world-class writer and exemplary literary citizen, has broken through the walls of censorship to bring the voices of Gaza to the English speaking world. In these deeply personal stories, Palestinians tell us what it is like to live through the mass murder and wanton destruction imposed by Israel on Gaza. The writings are detailed, specific in their renderings of the daily cataclysm. From sleeping with strangers, the frailty of tents, the sounds of killing, the fear and then reality of endless loss, from the indignity of over-crowded latrines, to panic of dreams, these writers bravely document their memories, desires, transitions from comfort to deprivation, the importance of a cup of coffee, of a memento of a previous life, of the recollection of a hope. A frontline teacher, Abulhawa makes describing the impossible, doable, and the world is made more intelligent by this massive accomplishment.”
—Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity

“Every Moment is a Life lives up to its title. The book presents the reader with the sort of life experiences that make one marvel at the immense dignity and strength that Gaza has become synonymous with. Each one of the moments described there is an indictment of Israel’s vicious war endured by the civilians in Gaza.”
—Raja Shehadeh, author of Palestinian Walks and Forgotten

“Writing in a time of death seems like a necessary means of survival. It is a hand extended from under the rubble, a hand that tells us, with its remaining fingers, that they are resisting death. In this writing, we see what the cameras didn’t see, hear what the journalists didn’t say, and remember what the world has forgotten, or has chosen to ignore, of a simple tormented beauty that wants to tell us nothing more than, ‘we are here … we are here’.”
—Ibrahim Nasrallah, winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

Susan Abulhawa

Susan Abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer and activist. She is the author of the international bestseller, Mornings in Jenin, The Blue Between Sky and Water, and Against the Loveless World, winner of the Arab American Book Award, The Palestine Book Award, and finalist for an Aspen Words Prize. Born to refugees of the Six Day War of 1967, Abulhawa moved to the United States as a teenager, graduated in biomedical science, and established a career in medical science. In July 2001, she founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-governmental children’s organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children.

Huzama Hubayeb

Huzama Hubayeb is a Palestinian novelist. She won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her novel Velvet, which was translated into English and selected among the fifty most significant Arabic novels of the twenty-first century. She is also the author of The Root of Passion (2007) and Before the Queen Falls Asleep (2011), four short story collections, and two poetry collections.

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