The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Against the Loveless World
Author: Susan Abulhawa
Published: August 2021
Genre: Literary
Themes: Palestinian occupation.

One sentence summary: Imprisoned and waiting to hear from one person, Nahr tells her story of occupied Palestine and resistance.

One sentence review: Harrowing and hard-hitting, this book packs a punch.

Review:

Nahr is currently in the cube; a prison cell that has housed her for who knows how many years.

Journalists have come and gone and while one of the guards is kind, there’s only one person she needs to hear from and she knows she won’t. Nahr tells us her story from Palestine, beyond, and back again.

If you’re looking for harrowing and hard hitting then this is the book for you. It’s a tale of resistance, comradery and friendship, all while under Israeli occupation.

Nahr grows and changes so much throughout the book, she tells us of her childhood and how it led to today’s events that find her in the cell, refusing to talk to the journalists that just want to spin her story into one of terrorism. It hasn’t been an easy life for her and so many points shaped who she has become.

It’s brilliantly written, sucker-punch to the gut kind of literary novel and I sobbed at the end. I feel like I don’t really have the words for how great it is so you’ll just have to trust me and read it.

If reading more is something that you’re looking at doing this year then should check my reading challenge out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 05/03/2025