The book
“Gaza has always been rebellious... stubborn, addictive. I’m her daughter, and I look like her.”
Born in Rafah, raised in Gaza, subjected both to Israeli bombs and to Islamist tyranny, and in the face of prison, death threats, abuse, misogyny, violence, and repression, Asmaa Alghoul has continued to speak her truth. She has continued to live and to love, to laugh and to protest. In this moving memoir of growing up Gaza with a hunger for freedom and a passionate attachment to the places she calls home, journalist, writer, and activist, Alghoul recounts her lifelong resistance to religious fanaticism, state sponsored violence, and all forms of repression and subjugation. Alghoul has been called “too strong minded,” criticized for not covering her hair, derided for ignoring warnings and speaking out against injustice. Her pure, clarion voice is raised wholly in support of dialogue, peace, love, and honesty.
Nothing, it seems, can stop her.
Offering an intimate look into life, politics, and survival in Gaza in recent years, Alghoul’s A Rebel in Gaza offers readers a nuanced and singular perspective on the current conflict.
Authors
Asmaa Alghoul
Asmaa Alghoul was born in 1982 in Rafah, in a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. A regular contributor to Al-Monitor, an information site that deals with news from the Middle East, she currently lives in France where she is writing her next book. She has won numerous international awards, including the Human Rights Watch Hellman / Hammett Award, the Dubai Press Club prize for journalism, and the International Women's Media Foundation Journalism Award.
Sélim Nassib
Sélim Nassib was born in Beirut in 1946 and currently lives in Paris. Throughout the 1980s, during the war in Lebanon, he served as a correspondent for the French newspaper Liberation. He is also well known for his articles appearing in other high-profile periodicals. In 1990, he put an end to his career as journalist and has since dedicated himself full-time to literature. He is the author of The Palestinian Lover (Europa Editions, 2007) and I Loved You for Your Voice (Europa Editions, 2006).