A book that, as Isabella Hammad and Adhania Shibli have stated and their work realize, shows how fiction can be so much more enlightening and powerful a teacher than non-fiction. All the stories and histories about Palestine (and Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria…) that I’ve read this past year are now a universe that has intermingled and transcended the boundaries of the books, the characters relate to one another and are in me now, and I’m changing. It is our duty to be changed by this.