After the Gaza Flotilla Attacks This Novel Hits Home More

This is just a quick post about a novel that my cousin (thecoverfelloff) gave me to read last week. ‘Where The Streets Had A Name.’ It is written by Randa Abdel-Fattah, author of ‘Does My Head Look Big in This?,’ an Australian author of half Palestinian heritage. She writes about Palestine in this novel, more specifically, about a young girl who lives in Bethlehem and has to deal with life under occupation. She writes about curfews, deaths, checkpoints, refugees, soldiers, peace activists, families and weddings and somehow manages to infuse humour and light heartedness with underlying pain and grief. The story narrates the journey of the young girl Hayaat, as she tries to sneak into Jerusalem illegally, and along the way readers get just a snippet of what living in Palestine is like. It’s enough however, to get bleary eyes by the end of it. If there’s one thing that stands out in the novel more than anything, it’s the complete sense of loss conveyed through the nostalgic descriptions of occupied Palestinian homeland. Read it, and you’ll know what I mean. It may be a teen fiction novel but it’s beautifully done.