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Namesake: WINNER OF THE JHALAK PRIZE 2025
'A wonderful book about the deep backstories and the tangled histories of N. S. Nuseibeh's own multiple identit[ies]' MARK HADDON
'Explores vulnerability, fragility, anxiety, and ambivalence as ways of beautifully coming to terms with the wounds and worries of the world' HOMI K. BHABHA
I may not be brave enough, but somewhere deep inside of me there is, perhaps, the kernel of someone who is.
That brave someone was the legendary Nusayba bint Ka’ab al Khazrajia, who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad at the dawn of Islam, the author N.S Nuseibeh’s ancestor. In drawing on Nusayba's stories, Nuseibeh delves into the experience of being an Arab woman today and in the distant past – taking her from superheroes and the glorification of violence to the rise of Arab feminism, to what courage looks like in the context of interminable conflict. By seeking to understand her namesake in the context of her own twenty-first century concerns, Nuseibeh links our current ideas of Muslims and Arabs with their origins, exploring myth-making and identity, religion and nationhood, feminism and race.
As intimate as they are thoughtful, these linked essays offer a dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home, while also showing how connecting with our history can help us understand ourselves and others today.
'Explores vulnerability, fragility, anxiety, and ambivalence as ways of beautifully coming to terms with the wounds and worries of the world' HOMI K. BHABHA
I may not be brave enough, but somewhere deep inside of me there is, perhaps, the kernel of someone who is.
That brave someone was the legendary Nusayba bint Ka’ab al Khazrajia, who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammad at the dawn of Islam, the author N.S Nuseibeh’s ancestor. In drawing on Nusayba's stories, Nuseibeh delves into the experience of being an Arab woman today and in the distant past – taking her from superheroes and the glorification of violence to the rise of Arab feminism, to what courage looks like in the context of interminable conflict. By seeking to understand her namesake in the context of her own twenty-first century concerns, Nuseibeh links our current ideas of Muslims and Arabs with their origins, exploring myth-making and identity, religion and nationhood, feminism and race.
As intimate as they are thoughtful, these linked essays offer a dazzling exploration of heritage, gender and the idea of home, while also showing how connecting with our history can help us understand ourselves and others today.
301 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2024
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659 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 3, 2024
I read this brilliant book in sporadic sessions and starts over the past three weeks at a time when I have not been reading and just trying to marshal every morsel of courage I have. This is an essay collection about Nusayba bint Ka’ab a companion of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. The author juxtaposes these reflections with stories and reflections from her own life as a Palestinian British woman. This collection is complex and beautiful and textured and very thoughtful. This is a book of a Muslim woman reflecting on her faith rather than a “religious book” and those are different things. This collection is about anger and faith and feminism and colonialism and gender and superheroes and family and so many things and it was such a lovely read. A wonderful book I recommend.
May 1, 2024
Wow, utterly blown away. So emotive, such depth - brilliantly written. I hope to read more by this author. One to watch.
September 21, 2025
My reel: #NSNuseibeh25 #Namesake #ReflectionsOnAWarriorWoman #readinganactofsharedsolitude #beedoubleokayess📚🐦 #paperpills🇵🇸❤️ #reemreel #athingofbeauty
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO31Ug...
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DO31Ug...
June 24, 2024
“‘Kan ya makan fi ‘adim il zaman’, my father would always begin, and then he would tell me a tale of a witch and a princess. ‘There was and there was not, in the depths of the past...’ And sometimes I would find myself daydreaming, in amongst the princesses and the witches, of this ancient warrior woman, my family's namesake, our ancestor, who both was and was not.”
I absolutely love memoirs & especially memoirs in the form of collections of essays where each one discusses a distinct topic while the main themes of the author’s life & identity run through & connect them all together. Nuseibeh’s book goes far beyond examining her own identity as an individual & the history of one of her ancestors—she also writes about the identity of her self as part of many different communities—feminists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Brits, privileged folks, academia & publishing, as well as as a friend, a daughter, an aspirant mother, & a descendant—all of which ultimately & inextricably inform the core of who she is as a single person.
Click here to read my full review of NAMESAKE complete with my full thoughts, further reading suggestions, & more of my favorite quotes!
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
CW // racism, genocide, police & settler colonial violence
February 19, 2024
Fascinating, funny, heartwarming and insightful collection.
July 24, 2025
Incredibly personal and poignant. The crimes of the west laid bare as if it were Fred and Rose (I deeply condemn these crimes in both cases of course). Guidebook says it’s a must-read.
July 30, 2024
An essay collection exploring the authors familial fascination with Nusayba bint Ka'ab al Khazrajia, who fought alongside the Prophet Muhammed written by a secular Palestinian Muslim living in England.
The very first essay “Aubergines” was an absolutely beautiful evocation of food, family, belonging and the religious past.
“I did not set out to write a book about Jerusalem. In fact, I intentionally chose a subject matter - my Arab warrior ancestor - that I felt would be broader, less controversial, more fiction than fact. But it turns out that it is impossible to write about early Islam without reference to Jerusalem, and impossible for me, as a Palestinian, to explore the personal without reference to the political. Being Palestinian, especially one born and raised in East Jerusalem, is difficult in ways that very few have taken the time to imagine, and to think about a Muslim warrior ancestor is to invoke questions that have clear bearing on the current 'conflict: questions about what bravery looks like, about community, anger, loyalty and the glorification of violence. About what it is to be a warrior, to be religious, to be a Muslim woman, an Arab feminist. Although these questions do, I hope, have larger resonances, these are all subjects that have direct meaning and consequence to a Palestinian. And so I found that every essay I wrote ended up being, at its heart, about my much-disputed, much-coveted home.”
Overall I enjoyed the writing style of this book, the way Nuseibeh blended personal and family anecdotes with the historical setting of religious stories. I also liked the rather atheist and secural view of religions and Islamic stories as central stories to the culture.
-
“We forget this, though. Colonialism and orientalism and occupation have emphasised the differences between the religions, even while paradoxically reducing the Palestinian Istaeli conflict to a dispute between tribes. Perhaps, in a sense, this has always been the Western project: Jews and Muslims have historically been eyed with almost equal suspicion by the Christian West, both told they are too
'primitive' to be European-civilised, that they have more in common with each other than anyone else.'”
“If you wanted to make it hard for a certain type of person to live in a certain place, you could go about this in a variety of ways. For instance, you could start by making their actual residency tricky - make it notoriously hard for that type of person to gain citizenship, even if they were born there, by denying it to about half of those who apply, or by halting the acceptances almost entirely. Make this the case even if this place - their birthplace - is their only home, they have no legal status in any other country, and did not choose to live there. Give them, instead of citi-zenship, a different status - say, 'permanent resident', such as immigrants have. Make this status precarious and easily lost. For example, if they lived outside the country for a few years, they would lose it; if they wanted to go on holiday, they'd need to apply for a re-entry visa in order to come back home. Make it so that they'd have to prove, constantly, that this place was their so-called 'centre of life'. Make it especially hard for families: make it so that a child could be given 'permanent resident' status only if the father already held it, but not if just the mother did, meaning that a woman who married a foreigner would not be able to raise her child in this place. Make it so that these residents can't vote or campaign in national elections and can't run for mayor, either.
You might also want to focus on making day-to-day living a bit hard. Maybe you start by concentrating on housing: make sure that there just isn't enough physical space for this type of person by declaring large areas of this place unfit for building, forbidding construction there.
Make sure that there are no government construction initiatives there, so that the onus on building apartment blocks and housing is on the people themselves. But make it impossibly hard for that type of person to get building permits and prove land ownership, encouraging people in need of places to live to build illegally, and then use thus illegality as an excuse to keep knocking down these houses and evicting their residents. Do all this while making it simple for other types of people to build there and live there. Make it so that the other types of people can move into the recently evicted residences with ease.
Does all this sound Kafkaesque? These are real policies that apply to Palestinians in Jerusalem - everything from the building permits to the residency issues. Take citizen ship: of the 4,152 East Jerusalemites who applied for citizenship between 2014 and 2016, only 84 were approved." Permanent resident' is a real status conferred on Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, and if you live outside Jerusalem for several years, even in the West Bank (a ten-minute drive away from Jerusalem, where you may have lots of family, which is internationally recognised as part of the same occupied territory but designated by Isracl, for all intents and purposes, as a foreign country. you risk having it taken away. If you're a 'permanent rest-dent', you're treated like an immigrant."”
“Khadijeh, she told me, smiling, placing the frames onto my face, soft hands grazing the tips of my ears. She pronounced it the way someone English would: Ka-dee-jaa.
Thank you so much for your help, Kh- I said, stopping short. I wanted to make a point of saying her name, but found myself stuck, suddenly, on whether to pronounce it the way she did or the way I would, with an Arabic accent. I felt the heavy glasses glide slightly down my nose a sweat began to prick at my armpits. She tucked a stray hair into her hijab and held out the card reader, and I tapped my card against the machine, aware that soon the moment would be gone, I'd be out the door, it would be too late. She handed me the receipt and with a heavily beating heart I finally blurted: Thanks. Kh-k-AAdijah! Too loud and too late. I sounded insane, or racist.
She smiled at me tightly and turned to her computer, raising her eyebrows at her colleague. Christ, no, no! I wanted to reassure her frantically. You have my great-aunt's name! I know all about the woman you're named after, Muhammad's first wife! I'm one of you!
But I just took my receipt and left.”
“So much of our essential sense of self, our identity, is actually not to do with us at all - nur social identities are, yes, determined by the social units in which we place ourselves, but also the groups in which we are placed by others, by how we are perceived and treated. If we are always treated as not-quite insiders, then this will determine how we think of ourselves, how we live.”
“I find a relaxed happiness in watching superhero films.
I love the easy morality of them (Good Guys versus Bad Guys), and especially how, at times and increasingly, this can be played with and subverted (though we know that our superheroes will always, in the end, be Good).
Superhero stories are also - unlike their predecessors Achilles and Odysseus, the Greek heroes of myth - stories about identity and belonging, not just violence and justice.
Perhaps partly because many of them were conceived by first-generation Jewish immigrants to the US in the 19305, almost every superhero has a dual identity, has to hide an essential part of him- or herself, uncertain they will be entirely accepted if their whole selves are revealed (thus their alter egos). Two sides that are in tension, a new identity forcing an old one out, figuring out how to bring the two together. How to be Superman and Clark Kent, how to be Batman and Bruce Wayne. They negotiate these two sides with difficulty, often letting one part of themselves down (Bruce Wayne loses his love for the sake of Batman's goals). These are classic experiences of immigrants from marginalised groups, and yet the superhero gente turns this on its head, makes the hidden not something for which one might end up in a pogrom, but a secret weapon instead. There is something deliciously hopeful about this, which is why, perhaps, I find superhero narratives often so uplifting.”
The very first essay “Aubergines” was an absolutely beautiful evocation of food, family, belonging and the religious past.
“I did not set out to write a book about Jerusalem. In fact, I intentionally chose a subject matter - my Arab warrior ancestor - that I felt would be broader, less controversial, more fiction than fact. But it turns out that it is impossible to write about early Islam without reference to Jerusalem, and impossible for me, as a Palestinian, to explore the personal without reference to the political. Being Palestinian, especially one born and raised in East Jerusalem, is difficult in ways that very few have taken the time to imagine, and to think about a Muslim warrior ancestor is to invoke questions that have clear bearing on the current 'conflict: questions about what bravery looks like, about community, anger, loyalty and the glorification of violence. About what it is to be a warrior, to be religious, to be a Muslim woman, an Arab feminist. Although these questions do, I hope, have larger resonances, these are all subjects that have direct meaning and consequence to a Palestinian. And so I found that every essay I wrote ended up being, at its heart, about my much-disputed, much-coveted home.”
Overall I enjoyed the writing style of this book, the way Nuseibeh blended personal and family anecdotes with the historical setting of religious stories. I also liked the rather atheist and secural view of religions and Islamic stories as central stories to the culture.
-
“We forget this, though. Colonialism and orientalism and occupation have emphasised the differences between the religions, even while paradoxically reducing the Palestinian Istaeli conflict to a dispute between tribes. Perhaps, in a sense, this has always been the Western project: Jews and Muslims have historically been eyed with almost equal suspicion by the Christian West, both told they are too
'primitive' to be European-civilised, that they have more in common with each other than anyone else.'”
“If you wanted to make it hard for a certain type of person to live in a certain place, you could go about this in a variety of ways. For instance, you could start by making their actual residency tricky - make it notoriously hard for that type of person to gain citizenship, even if they were born there, by denying it to about half of those who apply, or by halting the acceptances almost entirely. Make this the case even if this place - their birthplace - is their only home, they have no legal status in any other country, and did not choose to live there. Give them, instead of citi-zenship, a different status - say, 'permanent resident', such as immigrants have. Make this status precarious and easily lost. For example, if they lived outside the country for a few years, they would lose it; if they wanted to go on holiday, they'd need to apply for a re-entry visa in order to come back home. Make it so that they'd have to prove, constantly, that this place was their so-called 'centre of life'. Make it especially hard for families: make it so that a child could be given 'permanent resident' status only if the father already held it, but not if just the mother did, meaning that a woman who married a foreigner would not be able to raise her child in this place. Make it so that these residents can't vote or campaign in national elections and can't run for mayor, either.
You might also want to focus on making day-to-day living a bit hard. Maybe you start by concentrating on housing: make sure that there just isn't enough physical space for this type of person by declaring large areas of this place unfit for building, forbidding construction there.
Make sure that there are no government construction initiatives there, so that the onus on building apartment blocks and housing is on the people themselves. But make it impossibly hard for that type of person to get building permits and prove land ownership, encouraging people in need of places to live to build illegally, and then use thus illegality as an excuse to keep knocking down these houses and evicting their residents. Do all this while making it simple for other types of people to build there and live there. Make it so that the other types of people can move into the recently evicted residences with ease.
Does all this sound Kafkaesque? These are real policies that apply to Palestinians in Jerusalem - everything from the building permits to the residency issues. Take citizen ship: of the 4,152 East Jerusalemites who applied for citizenship between 2014 and 2016, only 84 were approved." Permanent resident' is a real status conferred on Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, and if you live outside Jerusalem for several years, even in the West Bank (a ten-minute drive away from Jerusalem, where you may have lots of family, which is internationally recognised as part of the same occupied territory but designated by Isracl, for all intents and purposes, as a foreign country. you risk having it taken away. If you're a 'permanent rest-dent', you're treated like an immigrant."”
“Khadijeh, she told me, smiling, placing the frames onto my face, soft hands grazing the tips of my ears. She pronounced it the way someone English would: Ka-dee-jaa.
Thank you so much for your help, Kh- I said, stopping short. I wanted to make a point of saying her name, but found myself stuck, suddenly, on whether to pronounce it the way she did or the way I would, with an Arabic accent. I felt the heavy glasses glide slightly down my nose a sweat began to prick at my armpits. She tucked a stray hair into her hijab and held out the card reader, and I tapped my card against the machine, aware that soon the moment would be gone, I'd be out the door, it would be too late. She handed me the receipt and with a heavily beating heart I finally blurted: Thanks. Kh-k-AAdijah! Too loud and too late. I sounded insane, or racist.
She smiled at me tightly and turned to her computer, raising her eyebrows at her colleague. Christ, no, no! I wanted to reassure her frantically. You have my great-aunt's name! I know all about the woman you're named after, Muhammad's first wife! I'm one of you!
But I just took my receipt and left.”
“So much of our essential sense of self, our identity, is actually not to do with us at all - nur social identities are, yes, determined by the social units in which we place ourselves, but also the groups in which we are placed by others, by how we are perceived and treated. If we are always treated as not-quite insiders, then this will determine how we think of ourselves, how we live.”
“I find a relaxed happiness in watching superhero films.
I love the easy morality of them (Good Guys versus Bad Guys), and especially how, at times and increasingly, this can be played with and subverted (though we know that our superheroes will always, in the end, be Good).
Superhero stories are also - unlike their predecessors Achilles and Odysseus, the Greek heroes of myth - stories about identity and belonging, not just violence and justice.
Perhaps partly because many of them were conceived by first-generation Jewish immigrants to the US in the 19305, almost every superhero has a dual identity, has to hide an essential part of him- or herself, uncertain they will be entirely accepted if their whole selves are revealed (thus their alter egos). Two sides that are in tension, a new identity forcing an old one out, figuring out how to bring the two together. How to be Superman and Clark Kent, how to be Batman and Bruce Wayne. They negotiate these two sides with difficulty, often letting one part of themselves down (Bruce Wayne loses his love for the sake of Batman's goals). These are classic experiences of immigrants from marginalised groups, and yet the superhero gente turns this on its head, makes the hidden not something for which one might end up in a pogrom, but a secret weapon instead. There is something deliciously hopeful about this, which is why, perhaps, I find superhero narratives often so uplifting.”
March 12, 2024
A superb collection of thoughtful, accessible essays. The topics are varied and bounce around, woven through with tales of Nusayba, covering language, religious conversion, superheroes, and Palestine, amongst others.
The type of book that you come away with a list of other books to read, or historical figures to better understand. Really quite wonderful.
The type of book that you come away with a list of other books to read, or historical figures to better understand. Really quite wonderful.
July 24, 2024
When I first came across this book on Instagram, I was drawn in by the watermelon cover, and the knowledge that it was written by a Palestinian author. Then I rad the blurb, and was further pulled in. A collection of essays that explore identity and feminism, all linking back to the author’s ancestor, the one and only Nusayba bint Ka’ab, from early Islamic history? 💥Sold, instantly.
Nusayba is legendary. She was known (or believed) to have been a courageous soldier, fighting alongside the Prophet during various battles, persisting in combat even when male soldiers were fleeing. Through personal, reflective and deeply-researched essays, N.S. Nuseibeh examines this prolific female icon from a contemporary lens, linking her modern-day challenges with health, motherhood, politics and more to the characteristics that Muslim historians have attributed to Nusayba. For as N.S. explains, she could very well be a myth, or a combination of different early women in Islam – nothing is certain. Nonetheless, the persona she embodies is a model of feminism from within the Islamic tradition, making Nusayba a stark contradiction to the Orientalist narrative of Muslim women and a role model for Muslim women of all time.
My favourite part of the book is where N.S. re-imagines both Nusayba, and Hind (the conversely notorious woman from early Islamic history, who is believed to have chewed on the liver of Hamza after he was slain during the Battle of Uhud). She juxtaposes the two together, picturing them almost as imaginary friends, as she grapples with her own feelings of injustice, anger and rage. She gives life to these women from our ancient texts, reviving their spirits in a way that’s so rare in books by, and about, Muslim women. I LOVED this, and in a way it felt validating for one of my own writing projects, which is releasing next year.
Nusayba is legendary. She was known (or believed) to have been a courageous soldier, fighting alongside the Prophet during various battles, persisting in combat even when male soldiers were fleeing. Through personal, reflective and deeply-researched essays, N.S. Nuseibeh examines this prolific female icon from a contemporary lens, linking her modern-day challenges with health, motherhood, politics and more to the characteristics that Muslim historians have attributed to Nusayba. For as N.S. explains, she could very well be a myth, or a combination of different early women in Islam – nothing is certain. Nonetheless, the persona she embodies is a model of feminism from within the Islamic tradition, making Nusayba a stark contradiction to the Orientalist narrative of Muslim women and a role model for Muslim women of all time.
My favourite part of the book is where N.S. re-imagines both Nusayba, and Hind (the conversely notorious woman from early Islamic history, who is believed to have chewed on the liver of Hamza after he was slain during the Battle of Uhud). She juxtaposes the two together, picturing them almost as imaginary friends, as she grapples with her own feelings of injustice, anger and rage. She gives life to these women from our ancient texts, reviving their spirits in a way that’s so rare in books by, and about, Muslim women. I LOVED this, and in a way it felt validating for one of my own writing projects, which is releasing next year.
March 27, 2024
ACTUAL REVIEW 4.5
I went into this not having read a collection of essays before and honestly knowing very little of the history of the israel/palestine conflict and the creation of Islam. This book insightful, intelligent and thought provoking, exploring ideas and thoughts in connection with the authors islamic background and their secular take on religion.
This collection of essays that visits ideas such as; feminism in the middle east, anger in relation to feminism and islam hate in the west hasleft me with a lot tothink about and to look into further to eductae myself on issues I had little to no understanding on previously.
I went into this not having read a collection of essays before and honestly knowing very little of the history of the israel/palestine conflict and the creation of Islam. This book insightful, intelligent and thought provoking, exploring ideas and thoughts in connection with the authors islamic background and their secular take on religion.
This collection of essays that visits ideas such as; feminism in the middle east, anger in relation to feminism and islam hate in the west hasleft me with a lot tothink about and to look into further to eductae myself on issues I had little to no understanding on previously.
April 25, 2024
Beautifully and intelligently written - she's managed to combine extensive research with an incredibly humane (and frequently humorous) touch. She handles a topic that must be incredibly painful for her personally with enormous patience and compassion. I'm excited for her next book - please write it soon!
August 3, 2024
This is a luminous read. Every few pages, I pause to marvel at the insights and observations. I return to certain sections to absorb the layers of meanings.
Isn’t this this kind of thought provoking and reflective sense the makings of an ideal kind of read?
It’s a timely read for all those seeking new Palestinian authored texts to teach and work with.
Gifted.
Isn’t this this kind of thought provoking and reflective sense the makings of an ideal kind of read?
It’s a timely read for all those seeking new Palestinian authored texts to teach and work with.
Gifted.
April 22, 2024
Well written and articulate essays, but if these are the views of an obviously well-educated and intelligent Palestian woman, it's clear there will never be peace in the Middle East. Blaming solely the West and Israel abdicates all responsibility. Shame on you.
October 22, 2024
The most thought provoking, relatable, and interesting book I’ve read in a long time. Spoke to me (a white woman) in a way that really resonated, and to the parts I could not relate to, opened my eyes to the experience.
Will be sharing with the friends around me. Recommend 100%.
Will be sharing with the friends around me. Recommend 100%.
October 26, 2024
I am very sad not to have liked this. I like the premise, but there was just too much going on and nothing that was well linked. The thread of the warrior woman was not well defined and overall even the essays themselves lacked structure.
2.75
2.75
January 6, 2025
Interesting collection of essays written by a British Palestinian woman. Each essay covers a specific issue and in each essay, the writer uses the life story of an early Muslim warrior woman, Nusaybah bint Ka'ab, as inspiration for thinking about the issue.
October 18, 2024
So brilliantly written. A must read.
February 5, 2025
powerful and timely, she tended to drone but definitely packed a punch when she wanted to!!
September 19, 2024
Quality musings on being an Arab/Muslim/Palestinian woman living in the UK and growing up in Jerusalem.
“I do not fit expectations of Arabness, Muslimness or Palestinianness.”
Breaks through both modern stereotypes & historic misconceptions. A relatable & educational read ❤️
“I do not fit expectations of Arabness, Muslimness or Palestinianness.”
Breaks through both modern stereotypes & historic misconceptions. A relatable & educational read ❤️
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews