SU Press “The Book of Disappearance” Longlisted for 2025 International Booker Prize
Syracuse University Press is thrilled to announce that “The Book of Disappearance” by Ibtisam Azem and translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon has been longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. SU Press published the book in 2019 and licensed the UK rights to the London based publisher And Other Stories in 2024. The International Booker Prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
The novel unfolds through the lives Alaa, a young Palestinian man haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa, and Ariel, Alaa’s neighbor and friend, who is a liberal Zionist, critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project of Israel. When Ariel wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have suddenly vanished, he begins searching for clues to the secret of their collective disappearance. That search, and Ariel’s reactions to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv – café patrons, radio commentators, flower-cutters – against whose ordinary lives these fissures and questions play out.
Critically acclaimed in Arabic, spare yet evocative, intensely intelligent in its interplay of perspectives, “The Book of Disappearance” is an unforgettable glimpse into contemporary Palestine as it grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory.
The International Booker Prize 2025 shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 8. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on Tuesday, May 20.
About Syracuse University Press:
Syracuse University Press, part of Syracuse University Libraries, was established in 1943 and has published groundbreaking works such as Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Ernst Bacon’s Words on Music, Jay Dolmage’s Disability Rhetoric, Siao-Yu’s Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars, and Barry Chevannes’s Rastafari: Roots and Ideology.
In its eighth decade of academic publishing, SU Press continues to be committed to serving New York State—as well as the region, nation, and globe—by publishing vital scholarship, sharing ideas, and giving voice to important stories that may not have otherwise been told.