Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Comma Press, 2019
Language: English

Drawing from her own experiences growing up as a young woman in the ‘world’s largest prison’ – Gaza – Nayrouz Qarmout’s stories stitch together a stirring patchwork of perspectives exploring what it means to be a woman in Palestine today.

Whether following the daily struggles of orphaned children fighting to survive in the rubble of recent bombardments, or mapping the complex tensions between political forces vying to control Palestinian lives, these stories offers rare insight into one of the most talked about but least understood cities in the Middle East. Taken together, they afford us a local perspective on a global story, always rooted firmly in that most cherished of things, the home.

Translated by Perween Richards
Title story translated by Charis Olszok

Winner of a PEN Translates Award, 2017

Nayrouz Qarmout is a journalist, author and women’s rights campaigner. Born in Yarmouk Refugee Camp, Damascus, in 1984, as a Palestinian refugee, she was ‘returned’ to the Gaza Strip at the age of 11 as part of the 1994 Oslo Peace Accord, where she now lives. She used to work in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, raising awareness of gender issues and promoting the political and economic role of women in policy, law, and the media. She has won a number of prizes including a PEN Translates Award and the Creative Women’s Award for her debut collection The Sea Cloak. She is currently Writer in Residence at The Mosaic Rooms, in partnership with English PEN, in London.