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Past Events
25 May 2022
6.30pm-8.00pm (London time)
May Book Club on Zoom
Things I Left Behind
by Shada Mustafa
6.30pm-8.00pm (London time)
May Book Club on Zoom
Things I Left Behind
by Shada Mustafa
Translated by Nancy Roberts
Available as Paperback or Ebook
from Banipal Books • from Amazon • from Bookshop.org
https://www.banipal.co.uk/banipal_books/122/things-i-left-behind/
This is young Palestinian author Shada Mustafa’s debut novel – a free-flowing narrative that interrogates, in short, direct sentences, the memories of growing up, falling in love, that keep forcing themselves out to be reckoned with. Through ceaseless questioning, and the seemingly random revisiting of each of the four “things” she has left behind, the narrator redeems her life from the inexplicable pain and tragic anguish that was her childhood in an occupied and divided land and family.
In so doing, Mustafa creates a unique writing style while at the same time allowing the narrative its original, cathartic function, liberating herself from her past, and finding her true self.
Why was she always having to cross the Qalandia checkpoint to see her dad or her mom? Why did they divorce? Why was her mom angry? How could she make her happy? Why was her dad a different man when he came out of the occupier’s prison? What was more important, the cause or the people? The questions become more urgent when she becomes a student and falls in love.
This short novel, original in its subject as much as its narrative technique, has been singled out from the start by being shortlisted for the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Young Authors.
Nancy Roberts is an award-winning translator of novels by contemporary Arab authors, including Ghada Samman, Salwa Bakr, Ibrahim Nasrallah, Laila Aljohani, and Ahlem Mosteghanemi. Her most recent translation is The Slave Yards by Najwa Bin Shatwan, Syracuse University Press, 2020, while her translation of Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Gaza Weddings shared the 2018 Sheikh Hamad Award for translation.
All welcome
Just email bookclub@banipal.co.uk to request the login details for this online Zoom event
If you have difficulty getting hold of a copy, please email us at bookclub@banipal.co.uk and we'll try to help.
The Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Banipal Books, 2025)
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
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Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
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