You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Comma Press will publish a first-hand, day-by-day account of life in Gaza from the perspective of a Palestinian caught in The Strip amid Israeli groundforce and airstrike bombardments.
The publisher holds all-languages world rights to Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide by Atef Abu Saif, minister of culture for the Palestine Authority (PA) in the West Bank. It will publish February 2024.
Beacon Books will publish the North American edition, Blackie Books will publish in Spanish, Angústúra in Icelandic, Noura/Mizan Books in Indonesia, Chiheisha Publishing in Japanese and Società Informazione in Italian. All proceeds will go to four Palestinian charities: Medical Aid for Palestinians, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Afaq Shadida/New Horizons Children’s Centre (Nusseirat Refugee Camp) and Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign (Khan Younis Emergency Relief).
Atef Abu Saif previously edited Comma’s Book of Gaza and is author of six novels and an earlier war diary from 2014, The Drone Eats with Me. He is originally from Jabalia Camp, north of Gaza City, but moved to the West Bank in 2019 where he became the PA Minister of Culture. He was visiting Gaza in early October with his 15-year-old son Yasser.
On 7th October Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages. The Israeli military responded with air strikes on Gaza, and launched a ground offensive. More than 22,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Comma said: “These diaries – many of which were written as WhatsApp texts and voice-memos sent to his publisher in the UK – follow a man who came to Gaza as a government minister and who was quickly reduced to running through the streets looking for shelter, like so many other Gazans, after the hotel he was staying in was bombed. The accounts cover everything from first-hand reports of shockingly graphic rescue efforts – many involving close relatives or fellow journalists and writers – to living in UN shelters in schools, to being displaced multiple times, struggling to find food and maintain contact with the outside world, to the decision to leave his father in the north for his own son’s safety, as well as living for over a month in a tent, an impromptu refugee camp in UN Stores facility near Rafah.”
Over a dozen extracts from the diaries have already been serialised in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Slate.com and the Nation.
The UK edition will be published with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times, Chris Hedges.
Comma released an earlier version of the diaries on Boxing Day as an e-book only version, featuring the first 60 days of his experiences. Comma said it is looking for other language publishers to come on board with the project.