Booker-nominated novel asks: what if Palestinians vanished?

‘The Book of Disappearance’ by Ibtisam Azem revisits 1948 and its lasting impact of displacement and occupation, presenting a Palestine of memory and a Palestine of today

The cover of "The Book of Disappearance"

Booker-nominated novel asks: what if Palestinians vanished?

Ali Almuqri

last update on 26 Mar 2025

Ever since the English translation of US-based Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem’s novel The Book of Disappearance was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, it has sparked renewed interest in the work.

Published by Al-Jamal Publications in Beirut and Baghdad, the book didn't make waves in the Arab world when it was first published in 2014, yet the 2025 Booker judges called it “speculative and haunting,” adding that it was “an exception exercise in memory-making and psycho-geography”.

Translated into English by Sinan Antoon and published by Syracuse University Press in the United States, its longlisting for such a prestigious prize marks a significant achievement for Palestinian narrative and Arabic fiction.

The novel takes as its premise the sudden unexplained disappearance of all Palestinians, triggering confusion in Israel. Beneath it, however, the novel intricately recounts the real history of the Nakba of 1948 and its aftermath—the displacement, oppression, and occupation endured by Palestinians.

AFP — During the Nakba of 1948 when Palestinians were expelled from their land.

Memory and reality

The story begins with the disappearance of Grandma Teta, who insists on being called this instead of Siti. She lives with her daughter and son-in-law but visits her old home on a street in Jaffa’s Ajami neighbourhood every day with her daughter.

One day, she ventures out alone without telling anyone, sparking alarm and fear in her daughter and grandson, Alaa, a graduate student who visits the family twice a week from Tel Aviv. They search for her, and Alaa eventually finds her, sitting on a chair facing the sea, lifeless.

Through the narrator, Alaa, the novel captures the tension surrounding the search for Grandma Teta. “My mother moved from house to house, looking like a lost ant in her nervousness. She feared that her hand, knocking determinedly on doors, would break—as if her fist were a hammer rather than flesh and bone”.

The novel uses rich rhetorical imagery and simile, such as describing "lungs narrow, like the alleyways, or "her arm as thin as a broomstick," or being rebuked "as if I was a fly," or Alaa saying: "Sometimes my shadow would leave me, as if it had become someone else's."

The sudden disappearance of all Palestinians in the story scares and confuses the Israelis—and also the reader

The novel presents two cities: one preserved in memory, as told by the grandmother, and the other experienced in reality by the grandson, Alaa, who narrates using multiple methods, including diary entries and letters to Teta.

Readers learn, through recollections, that Teta was pregnant with Alaa's mother when her husband—his grandfather—left for Beirut with her family, never to return. She chose to stay, fearing she might lose the baby. Leaving at that time was "like a death trap… they shot at us when we left our houses".

Haunting hypothetical

The narrative of The Book of Disappearance—the sudden disappearance of all Palestinians—evokes fear and confusion not only among Israelis but also among readers, given the reality that Palestinians face the threat of forced expulsion from their remaining cities and lands after enduring waves of displacement and uprooting. It raises the haunting hypothetical question: what if the Palestinians disappeared?

This revisits their oppression, killing, displacement, and confinement in a language that evokes sorrow, perhaps rejection, but above all, surprise. Ariel, a liberal Jewish journalist, moves into the apartment of his missing friend, Alaa, "waiting for the unknown," while Ariel's mother moves into the house of another vanished Palestinian.

Getty — Palestinian women and children walking towards Tulkarm after their displacement from Haifa in 1948.

At first, Israelis assume that Palestinians are simply on strike. Then Palestinian bus drivers fail to show up for work, as do Palestinian doctors. Even prisoners go missing. It slowly becomes apparent: all Palestinians have disappeared. Soon, the government holds an emergency meeting with military and security leaders while the prime minister consults allies.

The unfolding crisis is reported by a news anchor—ironically named Tamar Netanyahu. As panic escalates, there are rumours that the Palestinians could suddenly reappear to carry out attacks or that those in exile and camps were now moving toward Israel. The novel adopts a sharply satirical tone at times while using multiple narrative voices.

This gives it a flow, engaging the reader in different perspectives. In addition, the voices of Jaffa's displaced residents persist, resisting erasure. The novel brings them to life through their homes, street names, and Jaffa itself, which comes to embody all of Palestine, with its cities and villages. Among them is Teta Huda, alongside figures like Habiba, who satirises the occupation by mocking its renaming of places, and Walid, a prisoner trapped in an indefinite siege.

The recognition of this novel serves as a powerful testament to Palestinian reality and a history that, though faced with relentless attempts at erasure, still finds a way to endure, offering a horizon where even the faintest hope refuses to fade.

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