Songs for the Dead and the Living

by Sara M. Saleh

When the ground beneath your feet is always shifting, how can you ever know where you belong?

Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious, and they must try to blend in even as they fight to retain their identity.

When conflict comes to Beirut, Jamilah's world fractures, and the family is forced to flee to Cairo: another escape, and another slip further away from Palestine, the homeland to which they cannot return. In the end, Jamilah will have to choose between everything she knows and pursuing a life she can truly call her own.

Songs for the Dead and the Living is a coming-of-age tale played out across generations and continents, from Palestine to Australia. Through stunning prose, acclaimed writer and human-rights activist Sara M Saleh offers a breathtaking portrait of the fragilities and flaws of family in the wake of war, and the love it takes to overcome great loss.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Family, Adult

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 29, 2023

About the author

Sara M Saleh is an award winning writer and poet of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage, who has shared her work on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Her work has been published in English and Arabic across dozens of literary platforms including Haymarket anthologies and the Guardian, and explores the experiences of Arab-Muslim women navigating faith, family, and cultural expectations amid dispossession and displacement.

Sara’s debut novel Songs For The Dead And The Living (Affirm Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the US Khairallah Prize for Literature and the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Award, and co-won the Australian Society of Author’s Barbara Jefferis Award 2024.

She made history as the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review's 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. Her full-length poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat (UQP, 2023) won the 2023 Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the 2024 Five Islands Poetry Prize, the ALS Gold Medal, and the ALS Mary Gilmore Award.

Sara made history in Australia as the first poet to win both the prestigious Peter Porter and the Judith Wright Poetry Prizes (2020-21). Sara is also celebrated for her work co-editing the groundbreaking anthology, Arab, Australian, Other (Picador, 2019) and her most recent co-edited collection, Ritual: A Muslim Poetry Anthology has just been released with Sweatshop. She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, Nelima Sidney travel grant, Varuna writers residency, and Amant New York writers residency, among many other honours and accolades, reflecting her growing influence in the literary field.

Her poems, short stories and essays have been published widely in both English and Arabic languages, nationally and worldwide, including the Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Reviews, Red Room, Kill your Darlings, Rabbit Poetry Journal and SBS among others. Her publications are also portrayed in anthologies such as the Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II, Racism, Making Mirrors, Solid Air, A Blade of Grass, Groundswell: The Best of Australian Poetry, Borderless: A Transnational Anthology of feminist poetry, and Another Australia.

Rooted in the belief that literacy is a tool for liberation, Sara has rallied communities of artists across continents to create sustainable, generative, and inclusive spaces for craft, connection, and critical consciousness. From co-founding the Muslim Poetry Project to leading workshops in countless classrooms, community spaces, and festivals around the world, Sara has uplifted thousands of (SWANA) storytellers in a predominantly Eurocentric culture.

Reviews

[bee 🍉 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew from the minute I first laid my eyes on this book and read the description that it was going to be a beautiful read that I had to pick it up. I am so happy to say I was right.

Song For The Living and The Dead is a moving and beautiful book that follows the lives of a Palestinian-Lebanese family and their struggles as their family is continuously displaced from their homes due to the aggression of the occupation of the Israeli army.

This book portrayed the reality of the generational trauma that has been an integral consequence of the Nakba and the ongoing bombardments carried out on Palestine by the US-funded settler colony that is Israel. It explores the devastating truth that Palestinians are treated like prisoners with no rights in their own country and the discrimination that they face daily because of where they and/or their family was born.

This is such an important read, especially in today’s time as the world witnesses Israel commit atrocities against Palestine once again by displacing millions, killing thousands and contributing to the genocide that Israel has been perpetrating for the past 75+ years.

I can’t wait to read more from this author.

[Rebecca Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful novel detailing the pain and separation enveloped in the Palestinian conflict, and the effect it has on those who are displaced. Jamilah is a part of a loving family who find themselves exiled from their homeland due to war, and struggle to find a place to call home. Jamilah's journey is filled with hope and love and tragedy, and serves to teach the lesson that not all who wander are looking for something; rather they may be walking away.

4 stars didn't feel right, but neither did 5. There were many passages that I marked up in this novel where I found the writing profound and moving. For me, though, the ending felt a little rushed and this was the only thing that let the novel down.

A wonderful read.

[Natalia Figueroa Barroso · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truth-bearing Palestinian family’s story that crosses generations and borders, and explores love and resistance at the face of displacement and imperialism.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of identity, belonging, family, women’s roles, dispossession, war, and violence and loss. Jamilah and her sisters are growing up in Beirut after their grandmother was forced to flee from Palestine when she was pregnant during the Nakba. The focus is on this family and their lives and as the author says in her afterword “Every Palestinian has a Nakba story.”

[alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 still processing my thoughts kinda

[Bushra Shakil · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was a book I was procrastinating on reading. Mostly because I was afraid it wouldn’t be easy to read. That it would be too heavy and I would struggle to finish it. I was partly right. It is heavy. Of course it is, it is Nakba story. A story of displacement, of yearning for a home that Palestinians cannot return to, a story of struggles faced by refugees (both their own struggles and external barriers they keep finding in their way), and most of all, a story of love, life and Arab family dynamics. It’s equal parts beautiful, heartbreaking, nostalgic for me (it reminded me of desi families), and inspiring. It’s an invitation to embrace life and live with our head held high. I loved that Sara didn’t withhold herself from sharing the parts of Arab culture that are problematic because they felt just as important to the story as did the parts that were full of beauty- the generosity, the love and tenderness, the friendships, the strong-willed women and men, the living life to the fullest even when the entire world is against you. The novel does a great job of not romanticising tragedy while at the same time telling stories that must be told.

[Hannah Young]

this book was a brilliant representation of the families that have been displaced since the 1948 nakba (‘the catastrophe’) in palestine.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this novel stretches largely over a single decade, from 1977 to 1987, and is structured as a bildungsroman taking protagonist Jamilah from 9 to 19, it has the feel of a sweeping epic. Jamilah, like her father before her, is born in exile and grows up running. Her grandfather killed in Nakba, while her pregnant grandmother fled to Lebanon, she was raised in Beit Samra amid Civil War, her Palestinian father unable to bequeath her citizenship in a country she can live in. When the family flees to Egypt, this fragile status is further disrupted.
A lot is going on for Jamilah, and Saleh wrestles her narrative around sectarian division, changing views of modernity, education, and gender, the challenge to and opportunity of art in war, the politics of Middle Eastern and North African states, domestic violence and the ongoing waves from Palestine's occupation. For me, the book didn't entirely succeed in living up to the strength of its opening prologue. At times, the characters felt rushed between beats and major events, with dialogue awkwardly designed to get there. There are times when you see glimpses of Saleh's considerable mastery of language, especially in regards to Jamilah's art, but at others, the characters speak like they are catching us up.
The biggest strength here is the portrayal of Jamilah's tight-knit family. Saleh gives us a rich cast of sisters, parents, and extended loved ones. Their bond is strong as silk, without being sugar-coated. In this way, Saleh shows us the survival of a Palestinian home, among those who have never set foot there.

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such an important read, especially right now. For people in Australia to understand the complexities, the layers of pain and grief, of the Palestinian diaspora. An important read, recording stories of Palestinian displacement, of family and home connection.

Jamilah is the youngest of four daughters to her parents, one Lebanese, one Palestinian. All living in a village outside Beirut, with their grandmother that fled Palestine during the Nakba. Their Palestinian heritage is something that makes them other, on the fringe, and something they need to keep almost hidden, as tensions across the Middle East intensify.

As older sisters marry and move away, Jamilah's cousin is orphaned and comes to live with the family as another sister. This bond is beautiful, and so tenderly written. My favourite parts of the book.

Jamilah becomes close with a boy her age, as she is reaching her high school years. But the tensions around them all soon have the family in a precarious position again, and they flee to Egypt, leaving everything she knows behind.

More heartache finds them, before an opportunity for a new life presents itself for Jamilah. Although even then, far away from family and all that is familiar, this is not always the shiny new start she imagined for herself.

I am always going to love a family story of four sisters. This is a family saga story, with historical and familial history woven through, making it more meaningful and more generous a read.

[Han Reardon-Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and powerful, making painfully real the experiences of war and displacement. The complexities of the experience of arriving in “safety” is brought by Saleh into stark relief, with all that that entails leaving behind, as well as the new series of challenges and difficulties with which that might bring the arrivant into contact, and what roles that can play in new cycles of harm — harms embodied in interpersonal relationships and in the inscription into established structures of harm (in particular those of a settler-colonial nation state). Deeply necessary reading.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tells the story of a palestinian girl, Jamilah, and her journey from Lebanon, Egypt and lastly Australia. There were some good bits and I feel like it had a lot of potential. However there were many things I wish were different. The characters were underdeveloped and I wish there was more time in the Australia section of the book. The ending was super rushed which was another let down.
2 stars feels a bit too harsh so I went for 3.

[poeticool · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book made me think about how just one tough decision or struggle generations before had to experience and endure just for me to exist. makes me wonder about all the stories that never reached us.
🍉🔑🤎

[Len · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant and eye opening story of a families displacement from Palestine. It’s a story of love and loss and finding your way towards Freedom but at what cost?

Deeply moving. I shed a few tears reading the emotional final pages.

This book will stay with me always.

🇵🇸 Free Palestine 🕊️

[Elias Jahshan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving, complex and beautiful tale of family, loss, love and history. I absolutely adored this book. It’s the perfect debut and I am so excited for what Sara M Saleh does next.

[Kelly Blackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4⭐️
The story follows three generations of women all affected my displacement trauma and grief. Starting with the grandmothers escape from Palestine during the period of mass displacement and “ethnic cleansing” called Nakba where she escapes to Lebanon. Her son Noor, his wife and daughters flee Lebanon to Egypt and their daughter Jamilah seeks a better life in Australia.

The story is loosely based on the authors families displacement from Palestine and beautifully explores themes of war, trauma, grief, racism, treatment of women and identity.

The pacing in the middle felt a bit of to me, but I felt deeply affected by this book.

“Sometimes the homes that matter are the ones we do not live in. They’re the homes left behind, the ones we yearn to return to. And other times, they’re people. The ones we find homes in”.

[Cathy Hine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sad story that captures so many of today’s stories of pain and loss: the situation of Palestinians, the struggle of marriages across national divides, violence against women, the pain of patriarchy and its inherent and accepted abuses. Lines of hope are woven throughout but the tragic pain of reality that haunts so many people’s everyday lives cannot be escaped. Some say don’t read reality, but this story should be read.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

'Jamilah did not know what to make of herself yet – but she knew it was not homemaking or mothering. She appreciated solving mathematical problems using step-by-step formulas, though Lobna said they were an ancient language impossible to decipher. But numbers nestled in parentheses, cosines and sines and tangents, made sense to Jamilah, unlike the events she learned about in history class; the men who started world wars and still she couldn’t tell who’d won.'

[Jessica Panzarino · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️
A moving and poignant Nakba story about love, loss and the feeling of never belonging. Everyone should read this.

[Bridget Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was quiet poetry. I loved the lyrical dialogue and the main character. Jamilah’s coming of age was brutal and challenging, and she moved through each stage in her life with humour and resilience.

[Geetha Chandran · Rating 3 out of 5]

a nice story of 3 generations , lebanon, palestine, egypt , australia and lives of women in their homelands and home. themes of displacements and homecomings, the evil of mankind & the kindness found in good neighbours. audiobook

[Katie (IG: katie.reads.things) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible, moving and unforgettable book. It was amazing how the author could convey so much emotion in so few words. It has been a long time since a book moved me as much as this one did. Highly recommended

[Justine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. The characters, the setting, the story itself. I also really appreciate the insight and history that I gained from this at the moment in our time.

[Jackie McMillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars)
"Is it really home if you've never been?" Published just at the time when we need it most, in Songs for the Dead and the Living, Sara M. Saleh weaves the story of Palestinian dispossession through the lives of generations of women. This is a story of intergenerational trauma, from an ongoing conflict that has seen subsequent generations of the same family having to flee both the Palestinian homeland "weighed down by a thousand melancholies" as well as the places they made homes after it. This includes places like Beirut’s Beit Samra, where the book's protagonist, Jamilah Husseini, was raised. This book really lays bare how difficult it is to heal when the places your grandmother, and now you, remember don't even exist anymore, razed and renamed, "disappeared, bulldozed or blown up so no map, no memory could conjure them."

"For Aishah, life was fractured, the point of breaking distilled into a single, exact moment – when she was dispossessed." Even more cleverly, what this book explains is what it is like to live a generation or two on from the direct trauma of dispossession, honoring your teta's (grandma's) memories. It shows how these memories infiltrate and frame Jamilah's own experience of dispossession during the Lebanese civil war. In poetic prose that doesn't get in the way of narrative storytelling, Saleh explores the situation of Palestinian women. In Lebanon, as second class citizens without the same rights to travel and healthcare, marriage is seen as "a path to being seen and being safe – to surviving a society that refused to make room for them as Palestinians and as women." However even being married to someone from the country you live in doesn't always create safety, as Jamilah's sister Amal discovers: "when a husbands work is frustrating and the world is harsh, and he brings those frustrations and that harshness home."

The other way out is immigration, though the stress of being an outsider in a new country like Australia comes part and parcel with its own challenges and stressors that make domestic and family violence a greater risk. With a nod to the historic dispossession of Indigenous peoples that is also particularly poignant now, Songs for the Dead and the Living was just the book I needed right now. Stories "have a way of bringing back the dead – stories are the dead and the living sharing bread and salt together." I hope you read Sara M Saleh's softly written story to better understand what is is like to have your homeland ripped from under you, and how that horror is transmitted to your daughters, their daughters, and their daughters' daughters, impacting their safety, opportunity and relationships, making them feel alone in the world.

With thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for sending me a copy to read.

[Schatzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't remember where I heard about this book, but I'm so glad I picked it up at my local library. I devoured this! This is one of those novels where you say to yourself, 'One more chapter, just one more chapter'....nekkminnit ⏳️🫠

This was a beautiful book about a Palestinian - Lebanese family and their struggles of life in limbo as refugees from the moment their matriarch has to leave due to the Nakbar then to the war in their adopted Lebanon

There are bursts of joy interspersed throughout, and the childhood chapters are sweet but yet also heartbreaking in how adult the children need to be while still being so young and innocent.

I think even non Palestinian migrants and their kids (me!) will relate to the longing for finding 'home' and being caught in between. When your parents homelands feel so familiar yet so different at the same time.

A wonderful book by a local SW Sydney writer

[F.M Papaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really beautiful book, with vibrant, diverse characters that are brought to life organically. There is just as much care taken in historical and cultural details of each city that the story moves through.

This story is essential for so many reasons. It shows that life, grief, family and culture for Palestinians does not just stop at the Nakba. It shows the ways that displaced people are forced to reinvent themselves, to have to negotiate their identities with the places they move to - figure out what parts of who they were they can keep, what parts might need to be hidden. But ultimately, it shows that strength, endurance and resistance often comes in the form of living well and making the most of what you have, despite the circumstances.

I would love to see this book taught in Australian schools and elsewhere around the world.

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Songs for the Dead and the Living (Affirm Press 2023) is a pertinent novel for our times. Written by Sara M Saleh, the daughter of immigrants from Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon, the author combines her personal experiences, the history of her family and her skill in writing poetry to create this debut novel about belonging, family, loyalty, fear, racism, outsiders, escape and the idea of Home.

At the centre of the story is Jamilah who lives in Beirut with her extended, noisy and sometimes chaotic family. The novel is set in three times and places: Beit Samra in Lebanon from 1977 – 1982; Cairo in Egypt from 1982 – 1985; and Sydney, Australia from 1984 – 1986. Jamilah’s idea of Home shifts precariously throughout this time, as she learns her family are Palestinian refugees blending in to Lebanese society, then fleeing to Cairo to escape conflict, and finally landing in Australia, knowing she may never really know where to call Home, or ever be able to truly return.

The novel captures the essence of what it’s like to grow up in a war-torn nation, to be ‘outsiders’ in the land of your birth because of your family’s history, to be forced to make difficult choices, weighing up all you might leave behind with all you might gain by moving forward. The current conflict in this area of the world makes this book all the more relevant – set over 50 years ago, it seems very little has changed and perhaps has only become worse.

The cast of characters is large and initially there is a complexity to the family situation which does take some time, as a reader, to get your head around. But gradually we become familiar with Jamilah, her sisters, her parents, her extended family and her friends and neighbours, and we see that life is indeed complicated not only by their situation but by their cultural and familial bonds and responsibilities. Love and desire blossom but are tempered by duty, respect, expectations and situational difficulties.

I felt the author really hit her stride with the last third of the novel, which is urgent, pacy, intense and authentic, and which certainly brought together all of the earlier writing. The resolution or conclusion in the epilogue was especially satisfying.

In the first part of the novel, there was perhaps a little too much ‘info-dumping’ for my liking – explanations of cultural and societal norms, and background political information – but then in the end, I was grateful for it as I was mostly ignorant of the details and the minutiae of life in Lebanon and Egypt at that time. It was necessary information but could perhaps have been delivered with a lighter touch.

The author’s poetic background results in some beautiful, lilting, lyrical prose, and she delves into personal, familial, cultural and societal complexities with compassion, wisdom and a good dollop of humour which definitely lightens the story.

This is a book that imparts information in a highly readable and empathetic way, and asks the reader to consider connection, belonging, exile, love and duty on both a personal and wider, community scale.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Is it really home if you’ve never been?’

The story opens in 2007, with a young woman travelling overseas for the first time in twenty years. She is alone.

A shift in time takes us back to 1977 where four sisters are together on a balcony in Beit Samra, with a bird with a broken wing. Jamilah, the youngest, is nine years old. Jamilah knew home as a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut. But she learned that this was a temporary refuge for her family who are Palestinian refugees. Her family were unable to return to Palestine. In the case of Jamilah’s family, their temporary refuge is destroyed when conflict comes to Beirut. Again, they are forced to flee, this time to Cairo. This is the reality for so many refugees across the world: caught between needing to be safe and wanting to belong, torn between trying to fit in and trying to maintain their own identity.

Over the next few years, Jamilah’s sisters are married, and in 1985 Jamilah is also married, to Ziyad. She and her husband, in search of a better life, move to Australia where Ziyad has a student visa.
Initially life is difficult for Jamilah in Sydney. Her husband exerts strict control over Jamilah, and learning English becomes important as a step towards independence.

Reading this novel, as someone who have never had to seek refuge, I can appreciate that while physical safety is important to every individual, cultural ties are an important part of community and family. Jamilah’s mother (mistakenly) sees safety for her daughters in their marriages and while her father values education, opportunities are scarce. I finished reading with a greater appreciation of the plight of Palestinian refugees in particular, and hope that Jamilah would make her own place in the world.

‘It was strange, how humans filled their mouths with platitudes and pleasantries. It often worked, washing any bitterness away, but never for long.’

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Poppy Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I urge everyone to read this beautiful novel – for me, it was an emotional experience, given what’s happening in the world.
Australian-Palestinian human rights lawyer Sara M Saleh’s debut is an intergenerational story about the Husseinis, a Palestinian-Lebanese family who have curated a precious life for themselves in Beit Samra, a quiet mountainside town near Beirut, Lebanon. There are four sisters: Amal, Layla, Nawal, their beloved orphaned cousin Lobna, and the youngest sister, protagonist Jamilah, an adventurous girl who loves art and photography and has a sweet crush on a local boy.
In 1982, when the Lebanese civil war closes in on them, the Husseini family flee by air to Cairo. The underlying theme of the novel is about home, the loss of, and the longing for it, and how memory and identity are affected by displacement. Grandma Teta Aishah tells her granddaughters of how she fled her village, Lifta, in Palestine in the 1948 Nakba: ‘We had a home, and then we didn’t.’ The stone house Aishah was forced to abandon was beautiful, covered in peach roses, with a majestic lemon tree in the courtyard garden, and surrounded by almond orchards, citrus and fig groves.
The family’s life in the ancient city of Cairo is similarly portrayed in exquisite detail - bustling markets, cosmopolitan beach clubs, shawarma joints and bookstores on leafy streets. Eventually, Jamilah migrates to Australia and when the author holds a mirror up to Australian society the reflection is at times flattering, but also confronting. She doesn’t ignore the problems embedded in Palestinian culture either, showing how a patriarchal culture can shape problematic relationships, and how these issues might be overcome.

This is an Arab family portrayed with all their beauty, strength, vulnerability, and ordinariness. Like everyone, they have dreams and hopes, yet their heritage as Palestinian people means they face challenges and prejudices. To protect them from discrimination, the mother pretends they are Lebanese, for example. The underlying politics and history of the Levant region, the violence, and the peoples’ struggle are accessibly explained.
Food binds this family, and it’s lovingly and mouth-wateringly described: shish barak dumplings; stuffed pastries; spiced dishes and sweet biscuits, roasted nuts, and fragrant treats. Islamic traditions, such as a wedding ceremony, are also evocatively and enchantingly illustrated. This is exquisite, accomplished writing and an important contribution to any conversation on how we can try to make sense of the world as Australian people right now. I hope to see this book on upcoming Miles Franklin and the Stella prize shortlists.

This is a two-book year for author Sara M Saleh, who this week launches a poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat (UQP).

[Fleeno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Songs For The Dead And The Living is an absolutely beautiful, heartfelt book. This is a multi-generational story which centres on Jamilah, the youngest daughter of a Lebanese mother and Palestinian father. When the story begins the family is living in Beirut, where her pregnant grandmother fled during the Nakba. Although Lebanon is safe (safer at any rate) the family are treated poorly, they don't have the same education or career opportunities, or access to healthcare. At the begining of the novel Jamilah's sister Amal is getting married, not because she loves her new husband, because it's expected or she wants a family, but because she believes it's a ticket to freedom. For some of her sister marriage is freedom and for others it's a prison, either way Jamilah isn't sure marriage is what she wants however she doesn't have a lot of choices. Marriage is one of the few options available to the girls. Soon war comes to Beirut and the family flee to Cairo via Damascus, again a place which is safer and technically Palestinians are welcomed however the reality is somewhat different.

This is an emotional read, the novel shows the journey of loss and grief, the inability to properly grieve when your present and future is in turmoil, and the sadness which comes with celebrations. Jamilah struggles to establish her own identity amongst the conflict and continuous migration and struggles to set her own path to the future. Through the novel the family are treated in polarising ways, either with contempt, disgust, fear at the "drama's that follows Palestinians", or with kindness, empathy, and love - when Jamilah arrives in Sydney her neighbours help her navigate her new country, access English classes, and help her when she needs it the most. There is a lot of history and action packed into this book which can feel overwhelming until you realise these events all happened, this never-ending entropy is still happening. A beautiful and moving must-read.