Aamir

The least important part of Pizza Before We Die by Hassan Kanafani is my tiny little contribution to it which is a blurb that you'll find just inside the cover. It was my honour to have read the manuscript before publication and provide a few sentences for endorsement. Long story short, this is a necessary read 5/5 stars. Please, request it at your library, borrow it, buy a copy for yourself and friends, and above all read it, and be inspired by it, to action.

Because this is a recount of what the author Hassan Kanafani, a pseudonym for safety purposes, lived through in Gaza from December 2024, fourteen months into the genocide, until July of 2025, 22 months in. Around 8 months in all.

His words are spare, precise, and devastating. They lay out, in heart rending clarity, not only what he sees happening in Gaza himself or heard from his friends, but also incisive commentary on why it's happening and the immense burden of the emotions that come with both witnessing and understanding the genocide of his family, his friends, his people.

That this eyewitness account was published at all is an amazing story by itself and is explained in a foreword by co-writer Yasuko Thanh. I do suggest diving right into Chapter one though and reading the foreword later as Hasan's words will transport you right into Gaza especially when he leads you through the heart wrenching experience of Ramadan and the constant betrayal of the Israeli 'ceasefires' that were, and are, insults to the term. Kanafani's words are vital and necessary as they bring back to our minds the horror of what is being done to the people of Gaza in a way that even the terabytes of recorded video of the atrocities cannot. For example, here is an edited excerpt from March 2025: "There is a massacre in Nuseriat Camp after a strike on a charity kitchen filled with civilians. Everyone inside - hungry and fasting - perishes... on a day that should have been filled with sweets and laughter, there is only blood... Mothers weep beneath collapsed ceilings. Fathers dig with their bare hands trying to find what's left of their families."

This is a work of both grief and principle, It is both a memory and a call to action, the title speaks to holding onto life in the face of death. The hope from two little girls to have some pizza before they die even amidst a cruel and brutal blockade of food, even during flour massacres, speaks to the resilience of the Palestinians in Gaza and reminds those of us outside, with privilege, that death is inevitable for us as well, it reminds us to fight for justice before we die.

Thanks so much to Yasuko Thanh for thinking of me to provide a blurb and to the publisher Arsenal Pulp Press for providing me both a digital and physical copy for the purposes of the blurb and review. without them this necessary, heart breaking book would not have been published. Thanks most of all to Hassan Kanafani for bearing witness so effectively to, not only the devastation of his people in Gaza, but also their resilience and the inherent justice of their cause, the Palestinian cause, which is the cause of all justice loving people in the world. All opinions are my own. In the End, only God knows best.

This review uses some coded words in order to avoid censure or suppression. A version of the review without the coded words can be found on the reviewer’s personal website.

The vile American backed war criminal state hates Refat Alareer, the author of “If I Must Die” which is a collection of his works, for the same reason that it hates the boycott movement and the UN agencies that are staffed by his people. The reason being that any sign of non-violent resistance towards its atrocity filled occupation, whether it be through the arts, or advocacy, or even bureaucracy, destroys the morally bankrupt and violent ideology which it derives its legitimacy from. An ethno-supremacist ideology whose foundation rests on nothing more than mindless bigotry against Alareer’s people.

Alareer, a professor of English Literature as well as teacher, editor and writer, accomplishes this by the simple act of recording, in spare yet descriptive language the facts of his people’s lives under occupation.

About forty of these short pieces are collected here roughly in the order they were written, from 2010 to 2023.

The first of these works is a retelling of Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal. It is, I feel, the weakest part of the book as the adaptation of the Irish satire to his situation felt forced. Every other however belongs completely to him and his people even though they are written in English, the language of the British, who gave away Alareer’s land even though they had no right to, and the Americans who continue to fund and arm the crime of crimes being committed against his people for more than seven decades and counting.

The first 180 pages of the collection were written before October 2023. They describe the experience of his people as one of unending oppression punctuated by days of extreme violence. The tragedies inflicted on Alareer, his family, and his people should be overwhelming, but his words also highlight the resilience of his people. It is impossible to get more than a bare glimmer of understanding of the horror that Alareer’s people face or the beauty of the culture that is able to withstand it with steadfastness. That Alareer is able to provide these glimmers over and over is a testament to his skill and to his heart.

The last 72 pages consist of what Alareer wrote and said in interviews from October to early December 2023. The horror is that what he recounts of his people being massacred by the hateful state is not very different from all he wrote before, it just happens harder, faster, without pause.

It is the rare page of “I Must Die” that will not shatter a feeling heart, the few that do not are setting up the ones that will. But the heart that will break will be an ignorant one and in need of breaking. The one that will grow in its place will not only be more aware but also more committed to justice, resistance, and freedom for Alareer’s people. It is his triumph, a triumph that belongs not only to him but to all of his people who will be remembered for their resistance to tyranny and oppression and the heavy price they paid for the freedom that they will have wrested for themselves soon, Inshallah.

Throughout this review I have been speaking of Refaat Alareer in the present even though he was ripped from this world by a cowardly airstrike from the war criminal state in December 2023 on a residential apartment block. An attack that ended not only his life but that of his siblings and some of his nephews and nieces as well.

This is because he lives still through all of those who read and remember his words and commit to action to end the injustices visited upon him and all of his people. He has done his part in bringing to the world stories of freedom for his people and proving the hollowness of the stories told by their oppressors. Now the torch has been passed to us to take the next step and bring that story to fruition.

As he notes. “Don’t forget that <the land> was first and foremost occupied in the <ethno-supremacist ideologies’> literature and… poetry”.

And so his country is freed first and foremost in Refaat’s literature and his poetry. And not only his, as he makes clear he comes from a long line of writers and fighters and poets; a link in a chain that will extend far into the future and will become the reality of his people living and building in their free land in all of it’s entirety.

This is required reading for the whole world as far as I’m concerned.

Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park is an incredibly satisfying combination of spy intrigue and rumination on the struggle immigrants face with finding identity and meaning while navigating different cultures.

The intrigue comes from the plot which revolves around North Korean, South Korean, and Korean-American spies maneuvering around each other in the city of Oxford in England, as they carry out competing orders in a time of upheaval. The ruminations come from the novel's focus on how the characters feel about the life choices that brought them to the sleepy foreign city, their thoughts on their present, and their fears for the future. Both elements weave expertly around each other and provide drama both emotional and kinetic.

The novel starts with the mystery of the murder of a senior North Korean spy and jumps around in time as if follows about a half dozen characters affected by the death. Park doesn't hold the reader's hand or hold back on shocking developments, and his writing moves at a brisk place, but if readers trust him, as they should, they'll find he provides answers in due course which are satisfying while keeping questions open until the final pages. The final question asked by one of the main characters, especially is incredibly emotive and a worthy emotional climax. Deep dives into Korean culture, especially in the form of cuisine, add rich subtext and authenticity as do the evocative descriptions of the geography of Oxford and the interior of the titular restaurant, "The Oxford Soju Club" where a lot of the story takes place.

This is a story that rewards multiple read throughs. The various plot riddles and their resolutions are prominent in the first go around. After this, with the major mysteries solved, subsequent reads feel like a conversation with a thoughtful friend about the oddities of living a life caught between multiple worlds.

Highly recommended to fans of either intrigue, deep character studies, or immigrant stories. As I enjoy all three, this was an amazing story to have experienced.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for sending me an advance reader's copy for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

It's an strange thing to wonder if a sock puppet is a reliable narrator, but that's just one of the many thoughts raised by "The Unraveling of Ou" by Hollay Ghadery which is a novel narrated entirely by a sock puppet named Ecology Paul, or Ou. This seemingly silly premise is used to great effect to tackle themes of mental illness, generational trauma, and internalized misogyny. It's an easy four out of five stars for me and easy to recommend to anyone interested in these sadly timeless issues. Or just wants to experience an incredibly beautifully written and insightful introspective tale about the mental prisons that we build for ourselves or are built for us by our circumstances.

The sock puppet belongs to Minoo, an Iranian Canadian woman who was exiled to Canada from Iran for a youthful indiscretion and while she has built a full life for herself in a small town in Ontario she has a bizarre need to wear Ou on her hand almost everywhere she goes which puts a strain on her and everyone around her to put it mildly.

The indiscretion is decades in the past and whenever the past is described Ou acts as the narrator of Minoo's memories. In these parts the narration is lyrical, poetic, and insightful which speaks as much to Ghadery's skill with language as it does with the nature of Ou as an incisive, honest, and blunt observer. Ou is very clear in the novel that they are a manifestation of Minoo herself and it's a devastating realization that Minoo has exiled these parts of her into a sock puppet. It's in the sections of the past that the reason for the internalized misogyny and fear of her own body that Minoo suffers from is revealed to be Minoo's mother, who has her own reasons for raising Minoo to be fearful of her body and any thoughts she has that contradicts her mother's will. The portrayal of a socially conservative Iranian family that, while influenced by religion, is entirely secular, is incredibly well done.

It's when we come to the present that the writing feels suffocating and I think that's by design. Minoo never speaks for herself in the entire book and in the present the story is framed as Ou trying desperately to talk Minoo off her path of self-destruction. Minoo is devastated as, in the opening scene of the novel, her daughter Roya refuses to let Minoo see her newborn grandchild, and orders Minoo out of the maternity ward when Minoo shows up with Ou on her hand who Roya detests.

And this is how the book proceeds, revealing secrets about how Ou came to be created, the acts of cruelty and betrayal that scar Minoo, and the growing estrangement between her and Roya as the narrative flips between the present and the past. The focus is kept on Minoo's relationship with her mother and her daughter as every other relationship Minoo has is with well meaning family and friends who are helpless in the face of Minoo's mental state and Ou is no exception. Minoo has been in survival mode her whole life and Ou is a more visible coping mechanism then most of us have and the ending really gets at whether she'll be move beyond that or not.

This is a wonderful novel that I highly recommend. Thanks to the publisher and author for the advance copy provided for review purposes. All opinions my own.

In The Country I love by Alaa Al-Barkawi is a messy family drama which isn't really my genre but perhaps it should be because this is a wonderful novel, the tl;dr is five stars, go read it now.

It revolves around two families who are part of the Iraqi Shia diaspora in a small conservative white city in the United States of America with the two main characters being Yassir and Khaled who are best friends despite their families no longer being on speaking terms due to past tragedies. The trauma of the past has affected the two high school boys and they've started to go against their faith and family by drinking. While both are guilty of this, Yassir is the one who gets into trouble while Khaled remains a golden boy, especially as Yassir's indiscretions have left him the sole teenage parent of a baby girl, Yasmin.

And there are more tragedies in store, some caused by the Islamophobia of their new home, others lingering from their past as Iraqi refugees, and quite a few being self-inflicted. The book jumps backwards and forwards in time, counting down to and then away from a pivotal incident that has grave implications for one of the two main characters. The main difference is, while all the other conflicts served to force the characters apart, this one forces them together and leads to toxic secrets being unearthed.

One of the brilliant parts of the novel is how reading it feels like marrying into an Iraqi Shia family. At the start you slowly learn about the people in the family at a surface level and then as you spend more time with them, get to know them deeper, with new characters coming in and requiring time to get used to as well, the most important to my mind being the estranged daughter Kawther. As this is happening you will get familiar with the, perhaps foreign to you, Iraqi Shia culture and the importance of yearly religious events such as Ashura, and Arbaeen as you experience them along with the characters.

At the core of the novel is a deeply human question, that being what do you do when someone, or something, that you love, doesn't love you back?

And if that's not a universal sentiment, I don't know what is.

Thanks to the publisher and author for sending me an advance reader's copy for review consideration. All opinions are my own.