Nathan Thrall received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. He is also the author of The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books and been translated into more than twenty languages. He spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College. He lives in Jerusalem.
"Thrall is one of the few writers who can combine vivid
storytelling with in-depth analysis of the occupation ... his
expertise allows him to shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of
frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli
officials and nearby settlers."
--The New York Times, named a Book Review Editors' Choice "A vital,
important book."
--Ilana Masad, The Washington Post "A powerful evocation of a
two-tiered society that treats children as potential
combatants."
--The New Yorker, named one of the 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023
"Gut-wrenching."
--Imogen Dewey, The Guardian "Thrall humanizes the consequences of
systemic decay."
--The Los Angeles Times "I know of no other writing on Israel and
Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and
understanding... One could read the book as a pr�cis of modern
Palestinian history embedded in the personal memories of many
individuals, each of them drawn in stark, telling detail. To get to
know them even a little is a rare gift, far more useful than the
many standard, distanced histories of Palestine."
--David Shulman, New York Review of Books "If it's hard to make
people care about someone they've never met, it's even harder when
that someone is behind a wall. But in A Day in the Life of Abed
Salama, the journalist Nathan Thrall makes a virtue of that. The
book reports a profoundly difficult story ... made more difficult
by where it occurs: On the Palestinian side of Israel's separation
barrier... [Thrall] manages to find drama in the most boring thing
the Israelis do--which is bend the situation to their will through
administration."
--Time, named one of the top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023 "Thrall
captures both the universality and the specificity of the
experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation ... the
book builds a relentless case that this crash and the ensuing
trauma must be remembered. It was all so predictable--and could
easily happen again."
--The Economist, named a best book of 2023 "A quietly heartbreaking
chronicle.... At any time, this scrupulous, salutary work would
strike readers hard. Just now, it arrives in a cultural landscape
shredded by assumptions that sympathy and understanding run only
down a single route.... Not a word of A Day in the Life of Abed
Salama encourages one-eyed compassion or selective
truth-telling."
--Financial Times, named a best book of 2023 "[Nathan Thrall]
brings the reader as close to this reality as can possibly be done
with words. Through the painstaking accumulation of detail after
detail he enables the reader who has never been to Palestine to
experience life under Israeli occupation"
--Ahdaf Soueif, Times Literary Supplement "Could not recommend more
strongly."
--Jia Tolentino "Thrall's powerful and moving portrayal ... of life
under Israeli occupation is both a painful reminder of the costs of
conflict and, in its insistence on the humanity of its
protagonists, both Israeli and Palestinian, a glimmer of hope."
--Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs "Magnificent ... a piercingly
forensic account ... The book does what all good stories should
do--it unfolds both minutely and epically at the same time. It does
not moralize, and yet it does not shirk its responsibility to knock
our sense of comfortable balance all to hell."
--Colum McCann, The Irish Times, named a best book of 2023 "A Day
in the Life of Abed Salama reminded me that the best reporting
brings human stories to inhuman systems. I hope many will read
it."
--Madeleine Schwartz, The Millions, named a best book of 2023
"Thrall offers a unique window onto the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in this captivating profile of Abed Salama, a Palestinian
phone company worker and political activist, on the day when his
five-year-old son, Milad, was ... in a traffic accident near
Jerusalem ... It's a heart-wrenching portrait of an unequal
society."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Riveting... An eye-opening
and empathetic analysis of a profoundly personal tragedy."
--Library Journal (starred review)
"Thrall's taut, journalistic account of Abed Salama's daylong
search to discover what has become of his son is an agonizing,
infuriating, heartbreaking indictment of Israel's occupation. ...An
unforgettable and devastating symphony of pain and outrage and a
demand for responsibility."
--Booklist (starred review), named a best book of 2023 "Like J.
Anthony Lukas's Common Ground or Javier Cercas's Anatomy of a
Moment, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is digressive narrative
nonfiction as a major piece of political art."
--Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Literary Hub "Propulsive ... a kaleidoscope
of the aftermath of a tragedy, told from different viewpoints, with
multiple lives coming together, and the tragedy made even more
difficult because of obstacles Abed and others face because they
are Palestinian. This is an immersive story of an event, with its
aftershocks reverberating for years."
--Bookriot "Haunting"
--Jack McCordick, The New Republic, named a best book of 2023 "A
very personal and specific story of Palestinian life ... humanizing
the struggle for freedom"
--Traci Thomas, SheReads, named a best book of 2023 "A masterpiece
... an extraordinary achievement ... Day in the Life of Abed Salama
is a challenge to ... anyone who does not understand how awful
Israel's occupation truly is. If they read it, and if they are
honest, they will change."
--Mondoweiss "Shows with devastating power ... the way that
politics seeps into every aspect of the lives of those in
Palestine. At a time when facts have become weapons in this
seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with truth
of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history."
--The Observer (UK) "[This] is a book that is difficult to put down
and which even a close follower of developments in Israel-Palestine
can learn from. Walking in the shoes of Abed Salama, the experience
of what many describe as a one-state reality truly comes to life in
ways that are far more convincing than any geographic or policy
analysis."
--DAWN-MENA "Extensive and intimate"
--The Forward, named a best Jewish book of 2023 "A book that is ...
by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense
as a thriller.... Such storytelling is in itself a radical act, for
it insists on humanising those who are so often discussed -
especially at times of intense violence, like now - solely as
constituent parts of a category: "Palestinians." ... Thrall's
achievement is to make us see [the occupation]- and feel its
injustice - afresh."
--Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian "As war rages in Gaza, this book
offers a moving testimony of the more mundane forms of violence
that define life between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea."
--Connor Echols, Responsible Statecraft, named one of the best
foreign policy books of 2023 "Heartwrenching... with rare political
insight."
--Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens "Nathan Thrall's book made
me walk a lot. I found myself pacing around between chapters,
paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in order to be able to
absorb the brutality, the pathos, the steely tenderness, and the
sheer spectacle of the cunning and complex ways in which a state
can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of
the civilized world for its actions."
--Arundhati Roy, Booker Prizewinning author of My Seditious Heart
"It is hard to think of another book that gives such a poignant,
deeply human face to the ongoing tragedy of Palestine. Thrall's
evocation of both a terrible crisis and the daily humiliations of
life under occupation is nothing short of heartbreaking."
--Adam Hochschild, National Book Award finalist and author of
American Midnight "This brilliant and heartbreaking book is a
masterpiece. It reads like a novel, yet is all sadly true. I
finished it in tears."
--James Rebanks, New York Times bestselling author of Pastoral Song
"In this luminous story of Palestinians striving to live under
Israeli rule, there is much cruelty. But there is also great
love--of parents for their children, of lovers for their beloved,
and of people for their home. This book is transformative."
--Andr� Aciman, author of Out of Egypt and Call Me By Your Name "A
brilliant and heart-wrenching book that captures the daily tragedy
of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation better than any other
I have read. An outstanding achievement and a must read."
--Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans "Propels the
reader across a geography that is partitioned behind walls and into
enclaves, revealing in visceral, human detail what Israeli
subjugation means, and how it shapes the most intimate corners of
the Palestinian experience. With empathy and grace, Thrall
transforms this incomprehensible, avoidable loss into an ode to a
father's love."
--Tareq Baconi, author of Containing Hamas
"This impressive book shows us how everything in these
Palestinians' daily lives--from the mundane to the
catastrophic--has been controlled, contained, and shaped under
Israeli rule. Amid this struggle to survive, Nathan Thrall
documents the best and worst of humanity: pride, bravery, love,
stupidity, callousness and cruelty."
--Sally Hayden, author of The Fourth Time We Drowned "A towering
achievement. I've not read anything like it. Thrall takes the
bureaucracy and infrastructure of apartheid and uses them to tell a
painfully emotional, personal story."
--Omar Robert Hamilton, author of The City Always Wins
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