Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories is a blistering collection by the trailblazing author Ghassan Kanafani, featuring works he crafted across the 1950s-60s. In these pressing translations by Hilary Kilpatrick, Kanafani homes in on the lives of Palestinians in diaspora, flight and exile after the Nakba in 1948 – considering cruel ironies of survival in incisive prose.
The eponymous novella explores the terrible journey undertaken by three Palestinian refugees of disparate ages – Abu Qais, Marwan and Assad. They leave a refugee camp in Iraq to find new work in Kuwait to support their families – enduring indignities as they cross borders, in increasingly absurd, emasculating encounters.
The Land of Sad Oranges tenders a child’s perspective on their family’s expulsion from Palestine, and the agonies that pervade their daily life – stating “the tragedy had begun to eat into our very soul”. Each of Kanafani’s stories offer an indictment of the catastrophes inflicted on Palestinians – from casual humiliations to violent bureaucracy. They challenge the reader to make their own conclusions about complicity and the brutal consequences of apathy.
If these stories are horrific, they also capture glimmers of Palestinians finding their own quietude – even in the face of genocide. A Letter from Gaza voices a narrator’s choice to stay in his homeland, despite the life-changing opportunities possible elsewhere – remaining steadfast in his desire to rebuild.
Kanafani himself was tragically murdered in 1972 when Israeli agents assassinated him and his teenage niece in a car bombing. His stories are still shamefully resonant today. Kanafani urges readers to foster resistance against the systems that be, and to make noise about the plight of Palestinians.
Men in the Sun: And Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani, translated by Hilary Kilpatrick, is out now (Verso, £11.99).
