The Book of Disappearance

‘Brilliantly conceived and searingly executed.’ * Claire Messud *‘In this immensely readable novel, Ms. Azem does not resolve for us the calamity of Palestine’s occupation by Israel. But stylishly and with jeweled virtuosity she makes us understand that acts of great and humane imagination will be required, and with this potent book points where and how we must all go.’ * Richard Ford *‘Seductively bold…This rich, potent novel reminds us that there are no easy answers.’ * Guardian *‘Speculative and haunting, this is an exceptional exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography.’ * The International Booker Prize 2025 Judges *‘I love [The Book of Disappearance] for [its] narrative intimacy, for the questions [it] pose[s], and for [its] unflinching accounts and fierce recriminations of culture, identity and history.’ * Sarah Ayoub *‘Thought-provoking, unsettling and elegantly evocative.’ * Good Reading *‘In a world increasingly numb to ongoing violence, The Book of Disappearance offers a jolt of imaginative urgency.’ * NZ Booklovers *

Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, based in New York. She was born and raised in Taybeh, near Jaffa, the city from which her mother and maternal grandparents were internally displaced in the 1948 Nakba. She lived in Jerusalem before moving to Germany and later to the US. Azem has published two novels in Arabic: The Sleep Thief (2011) and The Book of Disappearance (2014). Her first short story collection, City of Strangers, is forthcoming in Arabic in the summer of 2025.