Young love, meddling relatives, heart-to-hearts with friends real and imagined - Philistia's world is that of an ordinary university student, except that in occupied Palestine, and when your father is in indefinite detention, nothing is straightforward.
Philistia is closest to her childhood, and to her late grandmother and her imprisoned father, when she's at her part-time job washing women's bodies at the ancient Ottoman hammam in Nablus, the West Bank. A midwife and corpse washer in her time, Grandma Zahia taught Philistia the ritual ablutions and the secrets of the body: the secrets of life and death.
On the brink of adulthood, Philistia embarks on a journey through her country's history - a magical journey, and one of loss and centuries of occupation.
As trees are uprooted around her, Philistia searches for a place of refuge, a place where she can plant a memory for the ones she's lost.
Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian writer who grew up in a village in Northern Palestine. She completed her Master's in Arabic Literature at An-Najah National University in Nablus. Besides poetry, picture books, short stories, novels, and memoirs, she has written a number of television and radio scripts. Her books have received many awards and recommendations. Ismee Alharakee Farasha (translated into the English as Code Name: Butterfly) was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries. Ismee Alharakee Farasha and Ashjaar lil-Naas al-Ghaa'ibeen, (translated into the English as Trees for the Absentees), were both runners up for the Etisalat Award For Arabic Children's Literature in 2013. Code Name: Butterfly was also shortlisted for the UK based Palestine Book Awards in 2017. Ahlam has been active in numerous cultural forums, and her craft has taken her to Belgium, France and Spain, where she was artist in residence. She also leads creative writing workshops for children and adults, including at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai.
Show moreYoung love, meddling relatives, heart-to-hearts with friends real and imagined - Philistia's world is that of an ordinary university student, except that in occupied Palestine, and when your father is in indefinite detention, nothing is straightforward.
Philistia is closest to her childhood, and to her late grandmother and her imprisoned father, when she's at her part-time job washing women's bodies at the ancient Ottoman hammam in Nablus, the West Bank. A midwife and corpse washer in her time, Grandma Zahia taught Philistia the ritual ablutions and the secrets of the body: the secrets of life and death.
On the brink of adulthood, Philistia embarks on a journey through her country's history - a magical journey, and one of loss and centuries of occupation.
As trees are uprooted around her, Philistia searches for a place of refuge, a place where she can plant a memory for the ones she's lost.
Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian writer who grew up in a village in Northern Palestine. She completed her Master's in Arabic Literature at An-Najah National University in Nablus. Besides poetry, picture books, short stories, novels, and memoirs, she has written a number of television and radio scripts. Her books have received many awards and recommendations. Ismee Alharakee Farasha (translated into the English as Code Name: Butterfly) was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries. Ismee Alharakee Farasha and Ashjaar lil-Naas al-Ghaa'ibeen, (translated into the English as Trees for the Absentees), were both runners up for the Etisalat Award For Arabic Children's Literature in 2013. Code Name: Butterfly was also shortlisted for the UK based Palestine Book Awards in 2017. Ahlam has been active in numerous cultural forums, and her craft has taken her to Belgium, France and Spain, where she was artist in residence. She also leads creative writing workshops for children and adults, including at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai.
Show more1. The light
2. The cat’s got my tongue
3. The real world and the imaginary world
4. Bayrakdar
5. The picture frame
6. Where else can a tree grow?
7. A long dream
Ismee Alharakee Farasha (translated into the English as Code Name: Butterfly) was included in the IBBY Honor List for 2012, a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books from more than seventy countries. Ismee Alharakee Farasha and Ashjaar lil-Naas al-Ghaa'ibeen, (translated into the English as Trees for the Absentees), were both runners up for the Etisalat Award For Arabic Children's Literature in 2013. Code Name: Butterfly was also shortlisted for the UK based Palestine Book Awards in 2017.
Ahlam Bsharat grew up in Tammun in Palestine and now lives in
Ramallah. Following a master's degree in Arabic, she worked as a
teacher for several years. An award-winning author of poetry,
picture books, short stories, novels, memoirs, and TV and radio
scripts, she also works for the Ministry of Culture in Ramallah.
Her literary craft has taken her to Belgium and France, where she
was artist in residence. Her book, Code Name: Butterfly, was
shortlisted for the 2017 Palestine Book Award.
Ruth Ahmedzai-Kemp is a British literary translator working from
German, Russian and Arabic into English. She graduated from Oxford
University and completed an MA in Translation and Interpreting at
Bath University. She most of all loves translating fiction,
nonfiction (particularly history, travel and nature) and children's
books.
Sue Copeland is a British translator working from Arabic, French,
Italian and Spanish into English. Since graduating from the
University of Exeter in 1977, she has spent most of her career
working for the UK government as a multi-lingual translator and
researcher. For the past two years has been a freelance translator.
She enjoys translating fiction and non-fiction, particularly that
associated with human rights and refugees.
A most ordinary, magical, devastating story: What Trees for the Absentees shares with works by authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Louis Borges is that it finds a way within fiction to beautifully express what the 'real' somehow cannot. -- Dr Nora Parr Life in a West Bank village from the point of view of a teenage girl, Philistia. Her multi-layered stories of daily life give an elegant insight into life under the current occupation and some of the historical context. -- Mike Scott-Baumann
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