Against The Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa opens in The Cube, an Israeli high tech prison where Nahr, a Palestinian woman, recounts the story of how she ended up there. Nahr is in solitary confinement but spends her time taking us, the reader, through her very difficult path. Nahr’s parents are from Palestine but had to flee the country because of conflict. Nahr was born in Kuwait and while she loved the country, at times she did not feel welcomed there. Living with her mother, grandmother and brother, Nahr dreams of falling in love, having children and living a comfortable life. Nahr ends up falling for a man with a mysterious past, she senses something wrong but cannot put her finger on it. Their marriage ends abrupt when her husband leaves her disgraced.

With the ending of her marriage, Nahr is penniless and is burdened with the finances of her brother impending college fees. Nahr meets a woman at a wedding, this woman takes particular interest in Nahr but this leads to Nahr being forced into prostitution. Rumours begin to circle in her community about her late-night activities. With the US invasion of Iraq, Nahr brother being wrongfully arrested, Nahr and her family moves to Jordan where things are especially hard.
In order to get a divorce Nahr travels to Palestine where she gets a divorce and falls in love…but also lands in so much trouble she ends up in The Cube… it is like Nahr cannot get a chance!

This is a story about resilience, love and facing adversary. Nahr has faced it all, and at time I thought, “can this woman get a break?!!!!” the answer is “no!”. I am all for showing how Nahr was able to overcome but… wow. While I did enjoy the book because I got an interesting historical, political, and cultural look int Kuwait, Jordan and Palestine, at times it felt like the author was trying to pack a lot in such a short book. There were some points where the book dragged a lot and the pace really faltered.

I also loved how the author explored the theme of love, especially unrequited love. I really felt for Nahr in that case, and I felt the author did a great job of exploring that part of love.

Overall, it was an interesting read that I would recommend you reading and experiencing for yourself.

I have spent the past three days walking around with this book in my hand and tears streaming from my eyes. If you only read one book of fiction this year you must read this one: it’s beautiful, heartbreaking, maddening, terrifying, stunning, and unputdownable. And it speaks to so much that has happened and is happening in the Palestinian Territories, events that many of us in the US and Europe pretend haven’t really happened and/or are not happening.

We first meet Nahr in an Israelu prison cell otherwise known as the Cube. A place where the world, time, family, even books and news and natural light have disappeared. Nahr begins to tell us her story, starting in Kuwait where she was born in the 1970’s. She is the eldest child of Palestinian refugees who were violently removed from their homes, left searching for a place to call home while continuing to dream of the land that was their’s for as far back as history can remember. At that time Nahr lived with her mother, brother, and grandfather, and felt Kuwaiti, even though Kuwait refused to provide citizenship to Palestinians, even if they were born in Kuwait, even after years of residency. We follow Nahr along a path of restrictions and choices, of desires and violences imposed on her, through the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and her flight to Jordan, and then on to Palestine. While most of the novel is Nahr’s story leading to her arrest, it does bring us back to the Cube now and again, where we experience the psychological violence of her solitary confinement, where even her water is rationed and dispensed whenever her Israeli captors feel like it.

Susan Abulhawa has such amazing talent: her writing pulls you into the story from the first paragraph, her descriptions appear in front of your eyes, and her characters are so real: they could be you or me. I fell in love with Nahr, with her strength and her needs, her choices and her pain and her love. Her story may be fictional, but it is set in times that are real, amongst events that are real, and from a point of view that is so often erased, hidden. I am sure that there are real Nahrs, too many of them, and the author explains in her acknowledgements that she collected real stories from real women while writing this story.

It’s too easy to forget what has happened and continues to happen in Israel and Palestine, and too easy to focus on the heavy pro-Israeli press that surrounds us. I personally lived in Israel for over a year during 2003-2004 (when a lot of the last quarter of the novel takes place), and reading it brought me right back there, where you had to learn to read between the lines to understand what was really happening, and where I personally learnt that events are not always the way that you see them portrayed on TV. I loved Against the Loveless World as much as I loved Susan Abulhawa’s first novel, Mornings in Jenin, and I hope that everyone reads it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in return for an honest review. And a huge thank you to the author for this amazing novel, for bringing us a character like Nahr, and for talking of the violence and erasure that an entire population continues to endure as the world watches on, indifferently.

I think this had a lot of potential, but ultimately fell flat for me. I felt like the story just dragged on for way too long and there was too much use of flowery language.

The story opens with our protagonist Nahr a Palestinian woman in a cube-an advanced solitary confinement cell in Israel. The story then goes back and forth from the current confinement to her past and how she got there. It follows her story born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugeees, to the US invasion of Iraq causing her to follow in her parent's refugee status and finds temporary refuge in Jordan, and then makes her way back to her family's native land in Palestine.

I was intrigued to learn more about the middle eastern history of that time period and found the perspective from a palestine quite enlightening. The story was stunningly and heart breakingly written. I loved how Nahr was unapologenic for doing what ever she had to do to survive. This one reminded me a bit of A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to receive this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to #partner @NetGalley for the digital ARC of Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published on Tuesday, August 25, 2020.

I requested Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World after absolutely loving her novel Mornings in Jenin. This one is, for me, even better.

Nahr, the protagonist, is complicated. She’s by turns selfless and selfish. She tells her story from The Cube, a “modern” prison that has removed all connection to the outside world, where she’s been for years, and yet she still fights, refusing to let others define her or control her. Sometimes, the only power she has is whether to face her guards or to face the wall when she’s chained to it, but that’s a power she wields with ferocity.

Nahr embodies the multiple identities that many women have, the masks they’re forced to wear because of society’s expectations. Growing up in Kuwait as the daughter of Palestinian refugees, she’s aware of the tenuousness of her life with her family: her mother, her brother Jehad, and her grandmother. Yet, when even the small amount of stability they have is taken from them, Nahr acts to save her family, to preserve their sense of security while facing the truth head on. She prostitutes herself to save them, and then defies those who take advantage of her or who try to shame her for doing what she had to for survival. She resists, at every turn, the judgment of others and instead lifts up her own self assessment.

In Mornings in Jenin, Abulhawa told the story of the creation of Israel from the perspective of Palestinian families. Here, watching the U.S. invasion of Iraq through Nahr’s eyes is another of those perspective-shifting moments in a book that I so appreciate. It requires a reorientation of assumed history, a shift to another point of view.

As Nahr, stuck in The Cube, flashes back to tell her story, each new chapter reveals a new stage in her life, taking the reader through her time in Jordan and then, ultimately, to Palestine. Seeing her return to a country she has known only through stories, watching her come to understand her identity differently with each new revelation about her family and their former home, is both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Nahr’s story deals often with love--with love between family members, with both romantic and sexual love, and with the potential disconnect between the two. She defines these words for herself with definitions shaped by her life and experiences.

Against the Loveless World is literary fiction, but often, that calls forth images of a slow-moving, contemplative novel. Here, yes, the writing is gorgeous, and I found myself highlighting sentences on almost every page, lured in by prose that is both spare and evocative. But the book is also fast paced, and Nahr’s story is so, so compelling. I sped through, eager to find out how she ended up in The Cube and what course her story would take.

I really cannot recommend Susan Abulhawa’s Against the Loveless World more. What a gorgeous, perfect novel.

One thing I love about reading is it gives you opportunity to hear different perspectives. While I have read both fiction and nonfiction books about the Middle East, I'm not going to pretend I fully comprehend the complexities of the conflicts. All I can do is read, listen, and hopefully learn and I feel like by reading this book featuring a Palestinian refugee character, I was able to accomplish my goal of getting a different perspective. It was certainly a thought provoking reading experience.

Nahr was born in the 1970s in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees. With money being tight and wanting to help finance her brother going to school, she becomes a prostitute. The US invasion of Iraq makes life even more difficult for Nahr and her family in Kuwait, so they are forced to flee and end up in Jordan. The book will go back and forth between the present time of Nahr being held in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison and the key events in her life that eventually led to her being locked up in what is known as The Cube.

There are some graphic sexual assault scenes in this book so fair warning this is a difficult read. Nahr and other characters also express their thoughts on Israel and Jewish people. In my opinion, it fit within the context of the story. I guess what I am trying to say is it felt authentic in terms of being in line with what those characters would think and feel. Now whether you agree or disagree with their opinions and actions, that would be a good topic for a book club discussion.

This book can be classified as historical fiction because it incorporates events from a war torn Middle East but Nahr is a fictional character. It's my interpretation of the Acknowledgment page, the author has interviewed Middle Eastern women, including prisoners, and was able to use that info to create and develop the character. Nahr was a strong female lead character and I felt invested in her story.

This might not be a book for everyone, but it was a worthwhile read for me. I am definitely interested in reading other books by this author.

I received an advance digital copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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<p>This book was beautiful and haunting and raw, all at the same time. I could stop there, and I could write a whole essay on it, and there still wouldn't be enough words, much less accurate ones that quite sum up what <em>Against the Loveless World </em>made me feel. The writing itself can make you <strong>hate the world, and fall in love with it<em>, </em></strong>all in the same breath. Telling the story of Nahr as she relives her life through memories, Susan Abulhawa has <em>easily</em> become one of my favorites and I can't wait to read her other stories. </p>
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<p>Nahr goes back and forth from life in what she calls The Cube, and the many different lives of Nahr before The Cube. Following the history of Israeli occupation of Palestine, Nahr's life is a combination of both individual and collective resistance against the multiple oppressive parties in her life; Israel and its military, the patriarchy, and colonialism being the main few. On the larger scale, I love this novel because of its storytelling and overall shock that came with the experience of reading it. From someone who will never quite understand this particular experience, and understanding that reading about it will never suffice, <strong>discomfort is a very small price to pay</strong>. <strong><em>Highly </em></strong>recommend for the writing itself; Abulhawa's genius lies in creating a world that resonates with a select few, but is still able to permeate the world's around it because she understands the significance of interconnection. </p>
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<p>Along with the larger, overall experience of the book, I was deeply taken by Nahr herself. Nahr <em>refuses</em> to be a victim of a world that tries to paint her otherwise. Between older Nahr in The Cube and the young Nahr from lifetimes ago, she is funny and clever and honest and I couldn't help but love her. While her story follows the events that got her to The Cube in the first place, we also meet the people that added to her journey, both the good and the bad, and it becomes crystal clear that Nahr knows that life involves both, as well as the in between. She develops a complicated relationship with sex and intimacy, with dance and the country that her mom and grandma call home, and with the people who have played their parts in a system that hurt her. And with her wit and sharp tongue, Nahr bares it all. Israeli-occupied Palestine is a cruel place for her, even when she's not physically in Palestine, and from what it sounds like at the end, I'd say that Nahr embraces it all. There's something extremely contagious about the passion with which Nahr and her peers speak about the world; it's not just about the big things, but little resistances, little victories, and little joys, too, no matter how they turn out. </p>
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<p>When I first started reading, I didn't know what I would call it. I was leaning towards calling it an historical fiction/nonfiction-inspired, but now as I'm looking back and writing this review, it becomes a love story, though a very twisted, cruel one at times. As the title suggests, Nahr is literally fighting against a loveless world, and as much as she has every right to recount only the loveless moments in her life, she doesn't. She also tells stories of hope and the tiny slivers of love she does find - in her country, in her family, in her people, and the pain and complication that has always followed. Nahr understands what it means to love her country and its people, as well as to love others individually (including herself). <em>Against the Loveless World </em>is <strong>stunning</strong>. I'm not confident that this review does it justice at all, but I hope to read it again soon and further develop some of my own thoughts that I haven't been able to phrase for you here. </p>
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The Gulf War. Kuwait. Palestinians. Iraq. George Bush. Abstract terms from the 1990's. But after reading Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa I will forever have a different understanding for those people and that time.

Nahr is imprisoned in "the Cube" chained to the walls. Journalists are her only visiters and they want her to say what they have already written in their stories. But Nahr watches movies on the ceiling. Movies of a life she had, thinking how it could have ended differently.

Nahr's parents are Palestinian refugees but she has lived her whole life in Kuwait. Nothing in her life has worked out - she struggled in school and her arranged marriage ended with her husband walking out on her. Needing money to help her mother and grandmother, and to send her brother to medical school, she works four jobs to try to get ahead. She meets a woman who convinces her that prostituting herself is the only way to get ahead. With the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US troops that bring down the regime of Saddham Hussain, she is forced to leave Kuwait and become a refugee like her parents. When she finally returns to her parents' home, Palestine, to seek a divorce from her missing husband and to get on with her life, she thinks she has found peace. But just as nothing else in her life worked out, her struggle is not yet over.

Susan Abulhawa creates a story that really grabs your attention and puts you in Nahr's shoes. I was surprised at how quickly I became involved in these characters from another place and time.

This story is both heart wrenching and captivating . This was definitely a book that I had to take my time going through . There was so much to digest that many times I had to put the book down and research some things (hey google ). We first meet Nahr, a Palestinian woman who’s in jail in Isreal for terrorism . While in solitary confinement she tells of her story of how the conflict in the Middle East has displaced her family, making them refugee . She tells their journey as they journey through Kuwait, Jordan, and Palestine, and decision she had to make whether goor or bad to take care of her family.
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This is a story of lost, love, conflict, resistance and survival. This is not an easy read, and it might be a triggers for some people, in face of the current tention between the mentioned countries . While this is a novel, it’s inspired by true circumstances , which led me to research and learn more of what’s happen outside of my world .
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This book has many characters , but it was easy for me to keep track of them all. This is a heavy read, but so eye opening

Everything is political. Some of us are lucky enough that we’re insulated from a lot of the politics. Money and privilege are our safety nets. So, given the awful choices that Nahr has to make in the incendiary Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa, lead her to become a freedom fighter—or a terrorist, depending on your point of view. Nahr comes from a family of Palestinian refugees who lost most of their land and have been making do in Kuwait, at least until Iraq invades and they find themselves in the middle of an active war zone. As a Palestinian, she is looked down on by other Arabs. She’s been taught to hate the Jews who stole her country. And on top of all of this, her family of mostly women has had to scrap and save for every bit of money. Nahr never had a safety net, with plenty of reasons to grow up angry at the world.

Against the Loveless World unfolds over roughly forty years. When we meet Nahr, she’s in a high-tech prison in Israel. We’re not told until much later why Nahr is in prison or how she got from Kuwait to Israel. To find that out, we go back to Nahr’s adolescence in Kuwait. After expulsion from Israel (which Palestinians call the Nakba, the disaster or catastrophe), Kuwait took in thousands of refugees as guest workers. Nahr falls into sex work because it’s the only way to get enough money to send her brother to university and to support her family. Her terrible experiences with men who take advantage of what they view as paid for and bought add to her simmering rage at the world.

After the first Iraq War, Nahr and her family flee to Amman, Jordan, where she is offered the opportunity to reconnect with her Palestinian heritage. This opportunity also brings her into the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, a bloody forever war between two sides who both believe they have a claim on the same territory and who have committed atrocities against each other. I’ve heard the story of Israel from the Israeli side, as a triumph of the Jewish people after the Holocaust. I can’t recall ever having heard the story from the Palestinian side. I definitely haven’t heard the story told with such fury as Nahr tells it. As Nahr tells us about her life and how she ended up in prison, she doesn’t talk so much about history as she does about Palestinian culture, food, art, and dancing—especially the dancing—and about how remaining Palestinians are holding on to what they have left of their ancestral land and holdings. It’s impossible not to sympathize with Nahr and her family. The difficulty in reading this book is that, as an outsider with some small knowledge of the history, I couldn’t take sides. I could understand Nahr’s actions, but I couldn’t approve of them.

Against the Loveless World is an incredible, but difficult, book to read. It contains so much controversy and hardship that I was grateful for Nahr’s happiest memories. But like so many other difficult books, it’s very much worth readers’ wile to read it. It presents a very human history that we in America don’t hear much, one that we need to hear to fully comprehend the mire of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. It’s also worthwhile because it can show those of us who live comfortable lives what it might be like if we were unlucky enough to be born without a state and without the safety money can provide.

Intellectually stimulating and Deeply Affecting..

Anyone who likes books about different cultures should most definitely read this. This book follows Nahr, who was born in Kuwait. She has a dark sense of humor and an interesting perspective. This tale makes you think and want to discuss it with friends. It would make for some great fodder at book club night. I would highly, highly recommend this book. It reminds an individual that you truly are not alone in your small little world. There is a great, big world out there waiting to be discovered.

This book was a real eyeopener for me. Nahr is a Palestinian refugee, living in Kuwait with her mother, brother and grandmother. Her family struggles to lead a better life in Kuwait. But even here, they're still outsiders, immigrants, forced here by Israel.
When Suddam Hussain invades Kuwait and the USA brings down Suddam, her family is forced to flee to Jordan. Many things happen to Nahr during this time. A marriage, her husband abandoning her, leaving her to fend for herself and her family. She does things she would rather forget, to put her brother through school and provide for her family.
She eventually ends up in Palestine, where she truly learns what it was like for her mother and grandmother when they lived in their homeland. What it means to fight for your homeland, protect the ones you love at all costs.
I really loved this book, and felt such compassion for Nahr and her struggle for a better life and a place to finally call home.

I will be completely honest. I don’t know how to review this book. My mind is a jumbled mess at the moment with everything I just read. This is not an easy read by any means, but it is an amazing one. It is also not a book you can easily fly through. There was so much information, I had to take breaks every once in a while to digest what I was reading. This was a beautifully written book, about something I know very little about, but left me completely heartbroken. However, it also left me wanting to learn more, which is what I love about books like this. There is so much about the world that I don’t know, so much history that has never been taught. I am so thankful for books like this one that open my eyes to the lives and history of others.

Thank you Atria books for my gifted copy of this book! As a side note, this cover is not only gorgeous, but the navy parts are a gritty texture, and the rest is a super smooth matte. I don’t known if anyone else loves texture as much as I do, but I could legit just touch this cover all day!

My review for Shelf Awareness Pro is here:
https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3793#m49301

The review was cross-posted to my Smithsonian BookDragon blog:
http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/against-the-loveless-world-by-susan-abulhawa-in-shelf-awareness/

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Against The Loveless World is the highly anticipated third novel by Susan Abulhawa. When I heard Abulhawa had a new book coming out I was beside myself with joy. As per her previous novels, this one too is based on the experience of a displaced Palestinian family. Our main protagonist is Nahr, who goes also by Almas and Yaqoot, and just as her names are many so too are the lives she lives. Moving from Palestine to Kuwait, to Jordan and back to Palestine before being imprisoned by Israel in what is referred to as “the Cube”, the reader is taken on a whirlwind journey of a life constantly interrupted by powers beyond it, in a narrative that switches between the past and the present eventually converging at the end. Another writer may have made the consistent series of obstacles unbearable to endure but Abulhawa has the skill of ensuring hope in even the darkest moments of her stories and even humour. As Nahr observes, “I suppose that’s what made them revolutionaries. They were all in, with everything they had, and that meant rummaging through defeat and disappointment to find a new plan and cause for hope”. The same could be said of Susan Abulhawa.⁣
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The characters were beautifully crafted and complex, many difficult to draw conclusive opinions on, especially the colourful Um Buraq with whom Nahr strikes up a relationship of sorts. Nahr’s story is intertwined with that of her long suffering mother and grandmother, Sitti Wasfiyeh who made me chuckle so often as the difficult but mainly well meaning matriarch of the household, and Nahr’s brother Jehad whose bright and promising future is tragically denied to him. ⁣
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There is love, there is joy, there is loss, there is heartbreak and there is resistance and the will for victory and the right to return for all displaced from their homes. It is a story which is powerful and poignant and one that will stay with me for a long while. I found the acknowledgements at the end particularly insightful as Susan shared some of her personal insights and research process for the book. ⁣
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The Gulf War. Kuwait. Palestinians. Iraq. George Bush. Abstract terms from the 1990's. But after reading Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa I will forever have a different understanding for those people and that time.

Nahr is imprisoned in "the Cube" chained to the walls. Journalists are her only visiters and they want her to say what they have already written in their stories. But Nahr watches movies on the ceiling. Movies of a life she had, thinking how it could have ended differently.

Nahr's parents are Palestinian refugees but she has lived her whole life in Kuwait. Nothing in her life has worked out - she struggled in school and her arranged marriage ended with her husband walking out on her, Needing money to help her mother and grandmother, and to send her brother to medical school, she works four jobs to try to get ahead. She meets a woman who convinces her that prostituting herself is the only way to get ahead. With the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the US troops that bring down the regime of Saddam Hussein, she is forced to leave Kuwait and become a refugee like her parents. When she finally returns to her parents' home, Palestine, to seek a divorce from her missing husband and to get on with her life, she thinks she has found peace. But just as nothing else in her life worked out, her struggle is not yet over.

Susan Abulhawa creates a story that really grabs your attention and puts you in Nahr's shoes. I was surprised at how quickly I became involved in these characters from another place and time.

"Against the Loveless World" by Susan Abulhawa absolutely blew me away! It's the story of a young Palestinian woman named Nahr whose difficult circumstances lead her to join the Palestinian resistance. This book opened my eyes to the plight of the Palestinian people whose homelands are encroached by Israel. Parts of this book are absolutely heartbreaking, made even more so when one realizes they are based on true events. Nahr is one of my favorite literary characters. She is strong, intelligent, and willing to do what must be done to survive and support her family.

Susan Abulhawa is a very talented writer. Her prose is richly detailed and paints a vivid picture of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Middle East. She shows the reader a rarely seen (at least in the United States) and unapologetic view of the grim Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation. This was my first book by Ms. Abulhawa but it definitely will not be my last!

Many thanks to NetGalley, to the publisher, and to the author for the privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this fabulous book in exchange for my honest review.

The story of a woman pondering the events that sent her down a radical path and landed her in prison. Born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees, Nahr has not had an easy life. Jilted by her husband, she becomes a prostitute to provide for her family. After being driven out of Kuwait after the US invasion of Iraq, Nahr resettles in Palestine, where she finally finds a home.

Hinting at the grim realities of the Palestinian life, Against the Loveless World is a poignant tale for our times. Nahr serves as a complicated protagonist, highlighting the combination of poor choices and awful circumstances that have influenced her life, and giving you much food for thought.

What a heart wrenching and captivating story. At the start of Against the Loveless World, we meet Nahr reflecting on the journey that brought her to “The Cube” – a sophisticated solitary confinement cell in Israel. Through this reflection, we see how the conflict in the Middle East has shaped her and lead her to prostitution, poverty, theft, radicalization. Abulhawa’s storytelling and character building shows how complex morality is. Abulhawa gives us some insight in her process and research at the end of the book which I am entirely grateful for. I know some readers may not appreciate the fact that Nahr is a composite character, but I think it worked well in this instance.

This is the story about Nahr, a young woman growing up in a poor area of Kuwait. I learned a lot about their patriarchal culture and her story was engaging, yet sad. She's continually pushed to fit in certain molds according to the men and elders in her life and she doesn't feel like she has many choices to make on her own. I have not read anything else by this author but I would read more by her in the future.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.