The DDGC collective is hosting an ongoing reading group featuring texts that help us think with artists and academics with vital insights about Palestine. The next installment of the group will feature Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance (transl. Sinan Antoon, Syracuse University Press, 2019). 

The official description for the book reads: “What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are posed in Azem’s powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Through these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel’s project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Ariel’s search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Antoon’s translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.”

The reading group will meet online. Each participant will find their own way to a copy of the book. It is available through your institutional libraries, available for purchase through your independent bookstore, and in other venues. If you have a hard time finding a copy of the book, reach out to one of the organizers. 

In order to sign up for the reading group, fill out the form below. Space will be limited and advanced registration is required. Please register by December 6, 2024.

Meeting Schedule

• Meeting 1: January 8, 10am-12pm PT | 1-53 (chapters 1-9)

• Meeting 2: January 29, 10am-12pm PT | 54-109 (chapters 10-19)

• Meeting 3: February 19, 10am-12pm PT | 110-168 (chapters 20-30)

• Meeting 4: March 12, 10am-12pm PT | 169-242 (finish book + afterword)

Organizer Contact

Jason Groves (jagroves[at]uw.edu)

Ervin Malakaj (ervin.malakaj[at]ubc.ca)

Adrienne Merritt (adrienne.merritt[at]colorado.edu)