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A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times
by Saeed Teebi
A vital, fearless memoir explores what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment, the effects of the genocide on Palestinian art and imagination, and that to even claim a belonging to the land from a country thousands of miles away is an act of subversion—a book that Omar El Akkad says "so perfectly contextualizes and humanizes so much of what has led us to this awful moment, and one that will be remembered long after."
Imagination is a more powerful force than hope.
Acclaimed author Saeed Teebi was at work on his first novel when the attacks on Gaza began in late 2023. The violence and cruelty of the attacks, accompanied by the assent and silence of international governments, stunned many across the globe, like Teebi, into a new state of permanent horror.
What does it mean to be of the Palestinian diaspora in such a moment? What does it mean to be of a people who have sustained such a large-scale assault not only on their homeland, but their entire identity? What is the role of art, of language—of imagination—in asserting one's identity, when that very assertion is read as an act of subversion?
In this incisive work, Teebi explores, with searing, razor-sharp prose, the effects of genocide on the bodies, minds, and imaginations—of Palestinians especially, and humanity in general.
This is at once a memoir of one family's displacement, a scathing indictment of global complicity in the face of brutality, and a profound rumination on art and imagination as a means of defiance. It is an astonishing work of resistance by a major intellect, and it is both urgent and timeless.
"[A] deeply felt memoir...Teebi reckons with what it means to be an exiled Palestinian writer at a moment when Palestinians are being killed by the thousands in Gaza...Yet Teebi persists, with grace and force, in trying to find some small hope in the act of storytelling." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"You Will Not Kill Our Imagination is one of the best books I've ever read on the psychological aftershocks of displacement, and the theft of home. It is not enough to call this work timely or necessary or clear-eyed, though it is all of these things. Saeed Teebi's writing does something else, something more. It cuts through the fog of moral cowardice that has enabled so much horror for so long. This is literature of the highest order, vulnerable and open-hearted, unwilling to flinch or submit to self-censorship. It's a book that so perfectly contextualizes and humanizes so much of what has led us to this awful moment, and yet one that will be remembered long after." —Omar El Akkad, acclaimed and bestselling author of One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This
"A book that chronicles the dislocation of the self as much as it does the dislocation of a people. By forensically shifting his gaze inwards, Teebi demonstrates how pain is passed down along generations, ever evolving and shapeshifting, persistent and relentless until healing — justice — can be had. This is a book that calls on each of us to do what Teebi has done; to consider our lives, to question our decisions, to take stock of our complicity — for we are all complicit as humans by our mere inability to stop a live-streamed genocide from continuing unabated. Only then can we bring our imagined just new world into existence." —Tareq Baconi, author of Fire in Every Direction
This information about You Will Not Kill Our Imagination was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Saeed Teebi is an award-winning writer and lawyer. His debut short story collection, Her First Palestinian, was a finalist for several awards, including the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize. His nonfiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail and The New Quarterly. Born in Kuwait, he resettled in the United States, then Canada. He now lives in Toronto.
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