Translations

by Jumaana Abdu

Amid a series of personal disasters, Aliyah and her daughter, Sakina, retreat to rural NSW to make a new life. Aliyah manages to secure a run-down property and hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region’s imām.

During a storm, she drives past the town’s river and happens upon a childhood friend, Hana, who has been living a life of desperation. Aliyah takes her in and tries to navigate the indefinable relationships between both Hana and her farmhand. Tensions rise as Aliyah’s devotion to Hana is strained by her growing bond with Shep.

Finally, all are thrown together for a reckoning alongside Hana’s brother Hashim, and Aliyah’s confidante, Billie – a local Kamilaroi midwife she met working at the hospital – while bushfires rage around them.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Australia, Audiobook, Contemporary, Literature

366 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 27, 2024

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the wake of a series of devastating losses, Aliyah flees to rural NSW with her young daughter, to the smallholding she has bought well outside of the local town boundaries. The property has been let go to an extent, but Aliyah's father had been a gardener and landscaper so she arrives with a plan. Being a very private person, she will do what work she can on her own, but for the rest she hires a Palestinian farmhand, whom she privately names Shep. The idea is that she will work with Shep a few days each week, and for the other days she will take shifts as a nurse at the local hospital.

All is going well until one day, during a fierce storm, Aliyah runs into an old schoolfriend, Hana, who needs to be saved from her brother Hashim. Soon Hana is living at the farmstead, recovering and in hiding.

I'll leave the synopsis there because this is a really good story and a great deal of the joy is in the discovery. Not only is it a good story, I also really liked many of the main characters.

In her Acknowledgements, Abdu expresses enormous gratitude to the publishing team behind this debut novel. I actually think they have done her a dis-service by allowing this overwritten (to the point of sometimes obscuring the plot) version of the story to go to print. I mean, I love language, but it was a chore to read. Between them, they expect far too much from the reader. If not for the promise of the story and the good characterisation, I would have abandoned it pretty early on. I think I will be wary of picking up any of her subsequent books and that's a shame.

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully immersive, thoughtful and heartfelt, character-driven story.

A wonderful debut novel by Palenstinian-Australian author Jumaana Abdu!

[ALPHAreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. A novel of grieving and connecting, a modern and truer representation of rural communities in Australia, and a beautiful harmonising of faith and seeking something larger than yourself to make sense of what’s here, and who isn’t.

There’s something even Chekhovian in the writing: the meeting of these players in this place, their frustrations and silences, the tender humour and heart. Or maybe it more reminded me of Andrew Bovell’s plays, for also being uniquely Australian and the use of spirituality, dreamscape and mesmerising intuiting …

Jumaana Abdu‘s writing is magnificent. From the very beginning and ‘Exodus’ it stopped me in my tracks;

They became uncitizens. Aliyah ran the idea over and over in her mind, all down the highway splitting the bush either side of her like an emerald sea. She thought it in the prophetic tense, to frame it as a future so certain it was as though it had already happened.

OOMPH!

I also think it’s amazing that Abdu wrote this in the penultimate year of medical school - while she was studying for major exams and attending hospital placements full-time!

She is an incredible new author, and this was a magnificent book - I agree with Hannah Kent’s assessment completely; ‘I will read everything she writes.’

[ariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful prose but at times a victim of its verbosity, interesting plot and good character development toward the end but a bit of stagnation before that. very affecting at times

[Anton Straney-Kraft · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author is undoubtedly talented and possesses a broad vocabulary, but her editor should have reminded her that not every page needs to showcase it. At times, the writing felt a bit pretentious, which detracted from the overall reading experience.

Unfortunately, neither the story nor the characters were compelling enough to compensate for the tedious prose. I kept asking myself, "Why is she telling this story?" and I can't say I ever figured it out. While themes like dispossession, ownership, and (mis)communication are inherently interesting, the narrative never crystallised into something truly meaningful or valuable.

I also found it difficult to grasp the characters' motivations. Why is the protagonist so perpetually angry and mistrusting? And why does she take in Hana so readily, despite barely knowing her? Their childhood friendship didn’t seem strong enough to justify such significant actions.

I hope the author continues to write—she's clearly talented. However, it feels like her team overlooked some key issues that could have elevated the book.

[ˋ°•☆&;josie.ೃ࿐ · Rating 4 out of 5]

RTC this one's a thinker

[angeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

Oh gosh I'm so conflicted about this book. On one hand, the writing was beautiful and thought-provoking. On the other, it was so overwritten and bogged down the story because of the excessive metaphors, analogies, and adjectives. Sometimes less is more, and I think the impact of this story could've been greater, if the writing was pared down just a bit.

A shame, because the themes explored in this book were so important. I loved seeing the comradeship and bond between the Palestinian and First Nations communities. I loved understanding why that bond developed. I loved the insight into a culture, so different to my own. I just wished the writing made this easier to get through.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it’s fun to get hold of a foreign book that isn’t out yet in the U.S., and may not be for a long time, or ever. Sometimes it’s a revelation, as with Palestinian-Aussie Jamaana Abdu’s debut novel.

It’s not surprising that the principal theme of a writer from a dispossessed family who moved to a country with a dispossessed people is dispossession, and loss more generally. But Abdu handles this theme so well, with such beauty and intelligence, with characters who, for the most part, find it difficult to speak through the grief of their losses so that, until toward the end of the novel, dialogue is halting. What a powerful debut! May it make it around the world soon.

[Gavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5* rounded up to 3*. Over-written. Just way too dense to be readable and sections felt very much like a lecture rather than a novel. The story line was actually quite interesting - but it was hard to get hold of it. "They spoke in riddles so as to avoid saying anything, but meaning came second to intention, which was mutually condemned." Say what? "Then, with care, they let the asymptote of distance approach zero, relieving themselves of many a malleable sigh as the night drew shade over the privacy of inner and outer fray." (they relaxed on the couch)

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most people probably don't remember writing lessons they were given in grade four, however, I do. I had a teacher who was clued in to the fact that some ten-year-olds had discovered the thesaurus and as a result, strung lots of adjectives together for a more 'sophisticated' sentence. He quickly put a ban on what he called 'fruit salad' writing. It had an impact - to this day, I prefer to read straight-forward but evocative writing.

There is no doubt that Abdu can write, it's just that Abdu's writing is fruit salad. Weighed down by flowery sentences, there's a lot of telling not showing. Additionally, I felt that I was being schooled in the main themes rather than discovering them. The themes focus on religious and spiritual beliefs, and displacement and dispossession, and are explored through Palestinian Muslim and Indigenous Australian characters. The story is set in a regional Australian town, which adds to the social and cultural tensions.

There's plenty of drama and plot twists, culminating in a final scene that stretched plausibility.

Will it win the Stella Prize? Wouldn't be my choice.

2.5/5

[Gia (지아) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had so much potential… such a shame that it was overshadowed by unnecessarily convoluted sentences and bizarre vocabulary.

[Caddyshack Project · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel of connection, loss and healing. Set in rural Australia, this book by Jumaana Abdu is an honest and thought-provoking narrative about the power of language, community care and multicultural identity. Grieve, love and laugh with Aliyah and her friends and family as she reconnects with her faith and finds community in a new home.

[Kate Belle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have so many mixed feelings about this book.
On one hand, I found the POV both fascinating and new. The protagonist, in fact all the characters, are refreshingly not white Australians. I was introduced to a world view unfamiliar to me, new perspectives that I knew as I read them, would be deeply familiar to others with Palestinian, Middle Eastern ancestry or who practice Islam. Australia needs more books like Translations.
On the other hand, I found the vocabulary and writing style a bit dense and inaccessible. Perhaps that was deliberate, in keeping with the themes and title of the book, but at times it made reading it hard work, and some scenes mystifying to me. I felt like I was tripping over clever, unusual words and that got in the way of being able to understand what was going on between the characters.
I picked this book up at Sorrento Writers Festival after hearing the author speak on a panel. Jumaana Abdu is an intelligent, articulate and impressive person to listen to. Her descriptions of her writing process compelled me to buy her book.
The ending is shocking and compelling, well worth wading through all the 'big words' in the text to get to. In the end though I am left feeling confused, and wondering if that was the author's intention for a reader like myself, for whom the world and experience of the characters is as far from my lived experience as the moon. Nonetheless, I gained a glimpse of life experienced from the perspective of an Australian with a colonised immigrant heritage and the tension that brings to becoming part of a colonising story in a new land.
I can't honestly say I loved this book, but it challenged me and pushed me into discomfort and a place of reflection and learning.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aliyah, a divorced Muslim woman moves to a farm in rural NSW with her daughter. She hires a man to work on it with her, Shep, a Palestinian. She also works at the local hospital two days a week with Aboriginal nurse, Billie, a fabulous character. The other major character is Hana, Aliyah’s childhood friend with a traumatic family life. I really enjoyed this novel, beautiful language and lots of ideas about culture, identity, land and belonging. Many other big issues are covered as well from domestic violence, racism, policing, healthcare, end of life care, trauma and more. There’s also a lot of religious argument but I found it intriguing and interesting, not preached at. Overall I found this an immersive read, with lots of attention to detail.

[Siobhan Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much to love about it, but also felt a little impenetrable due to complexity in language, insinuation etc - at points the verbosity compromised my understanding or engagement as a reader. Would definitely read more from her, as I value and learn from her voice, but hope future work is a little kinder to tired readers!

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the tensions and shifts between the three main characters most I also enjoyed the gift of cultural enrichment that reading Translations gave to me as a reader. Things I enjoyed less were the most esoteric discussions and some of the didactic elements.

[Emily Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite book of the year. Moving look into the intimacy of female friendships, connection through culture, grief, love and future. Loved it.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an amazing book and I'm grateful to my sister for recommending it to me. It took me a while to warm up to it and be immersed in Aliyah's world, hence the 4 star rating, but by the end I was totally convinced of each character's humanity and realness. Discussions of female friendship, motherhood, womanhood, faith and dispossession were expressed with such eloquence and originality. Abdu has a gift for putting into words what is often so hard to say.

[Amar · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars
Wordy

[Tatenda Hopkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought-provoking and emotionally charged, this book takes you on an unforgettable roller coaster ride. It's a powerful story about beliefs, hope, friendship, love, adversity, and acceptance. It feels incredibly relevant today. Thank you, Jumaana, for guiding me on a journey I never dared to walk—mainly due to inherent biases—demonstrating the true power of storytelling

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rural Australian story of histories, grief and ghosts of the past, and finding your community. An emulsion of Palestinian and Aboriginal cultures, set in the harsh Australian country town realities.

Aliyah and her daughter move into a huge house on the outskirts of an Australian town, escaping terrible grief and sadness, and a broken marriage. As she finds her place among the locals, through work, and her new employee, she builds her circles of care, within a place with it's own dark history.

From a mixed, and complicated family history herself, she begins to learn about the family bonds of her boss and her family, and then also of her new employee. Aboriginal storylines, and the ways of taking care of family and community, start to emerge from this growing friendship. Palestinian and Muslim beliefs and experiences, reaffirm and strengthen Aliyah's understanding of herself, her world, and what's really important.

Incredibly, a horror moment one evening brings her childhood friend back to her world, in frightening circumstances. This unravels much history, rebuilds that bond, and requires the support of the whole village for safety and care.

Reading the about the author's background in the final page perhaps helped to explain the use of thesaurus heavy word use! This often overwhelmed the reading experience for me, with an overreach for explanation and description - but an overachieving doctor perhaps imagined she needed literary flourish to also be a writer.

Themes of loss, complex family dynamics, infant loss, domestic violence, faith, love and community all weave through this story with many threads. Much of what was told here was compelling and full of heart, although perhaps the many threads, leaps of believability and language could have benefited from more gentle editing work.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translations by Jumaana Abdu is quite something. It is an ode to living on the land in harmony, and an exploration of and slow building understanding (for her MC at least) of the power of community. Abdu uses her knowledge of anatomy to look at human emotions on a biophysical level, but in a lyrical way. The characters discuss the settler-occupier dynamic through the prism of Palestinian genocide, and Aboriginal Australia. There is so much said but lots left under said, which I found quite a different way of storytelling. She covers a lot - trauma, violence, grief, fear, connection and isolation, and the setting in a rural community, on a farm land, is a stark way of doing so. She speaks often to the idea of translating- it's impossibilities but also what can be gained from even imperfect attempts. I also loved the way Islam is interwoven into the story, their worshipping and rituals, and the characters look at ideas and tenets which come from their relationship with their spirituality in a way that offers much to readers with limited knowledge (and also ones with profound understanding too). This is an important, empowering and strengthening story. It breathes life and complexity into what is still so often a simplistic and reductive perspective on Muslim beliefs and characterisation in Australian society.

"There is also no way to write a book exploring the effects of dispossession, displacement and settler-colonial violence without recognising the same processes ongoing in this country. Now especially, solidarity between First Nations and Palestinian folk has proven itself precious and a force to be reckoned with." - Author's note

[Zara H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel raw.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the death of her father, educated Aliyah moves from the city to live in a rural area with her daughter Sakina.

Purchasing her own property and having the liberty to make her own choices, Aliyah works hard to grow her own produce and hires a farmhand, Shep, to assist with the enormous job.

Aliyah and Shep, together, explore the philosophies of their lives and their religion with mutual understanding but lies will cause riffs and can they be overcome?

Throughout the story, Aliyah makes new friends and gets reacquainted with old ones causing turmoil, bonds and community cohesion.

I enjoyed this book and the insight from Aliyah's point of view.

Thankyou to #Netgalley and #Stormpublishing for the free copy of #Translations in exchange for an honest review.

[Hannah G · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not for me.

I found the writing inaccessible.

And what was the take on family violence - do not report it to the police and try to help the perpetrator within the family or community?

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Aliyah took the blow. She turned away and pressed her hand hard across her eyes. This crisis, which should have swept the two women together, had instead torn open an honesty that marooned them almost two decades apart. Perhaps the closest they had ever been was the moment they had first met, drawing blood, and every meeting thereafter had been an attempt to regain an irretrievable intimacy."

This is a breathtakingly good debut. Abdu brings us a tale of pyschological intensity, spun in taut, tense prose, and set on a haunted property isolated enough to feel unmoored, while close enough to a small community to feel scrutinised. At the centre of the book, and the house, is Aliyah, whose self-reliance has long since passed healthy. She is shadowed by Shep, a local imam whose own demons sit, at first, comfortably alongside her own, and then by Hana, a woman struggling not to be defined by victimhood. All are bound by the brightly insoucient daughter of Aliyah, and then Billie, a local Kamiliroi nurse, and her family.
These people push and pull at each other, both repelled and attracted by each others' needs and wants. Abdu explores the discomfort of love, the difficulty of distinguishing self. Shep and Aliyah revel in silence. The language, the constructed sentences, rise and fall in an almost soothing way, even while laying out hard, sparse disconnects. The book can feel unbearably lovely at times, elevating the stuff of friendship, survival and love to something transcendent.
Abdu's focus is tightly on the characters emotions, which are focused on their immediate lives, but the book is informed by a broader social critique. Aliyah and Hana have lives marked by their gender - "From these men she knew only that to express resentment, to hint at any restlessness or dissatisfaction was to intimate a desire bordering dangerously on need, which, no matter its nature, was received as a threat to their ideal of social stability, hormonal predictability, and lifelong virility, considered so alarming that Aliyah always felt obliged to rally reassurance that her disquiet was but a passing phase. If that failed, there was always the option of blaming female hysteria and requesting a prayer for either exorcism or pity. In the weeks before leaving the city, she had wished her father’s house would collapse on her to grant her some relief. In the last days of her marriage, she had sat on their penthouse balcony and watched planes fly low overhead, gripped by a superb terror when for a moment it seemed a plane might stoop so low as to crash into her building, low enough to crush her, suffocate her, obliterate everything.". Shep is Palestinian, a refugee from the 2009 Gaza attacks. The emotional lives of the characters revolve around these issues, and the concepts of land ownership. In speaking to Billie, Shep explains: ""The violence of a settler colony pushed me out of my land, only for me to come here where the same violence is ongoing. I do to you what was done to me. And those who forced me to escape slaughter were once forced to do the same. Like a chain of loss and expulsion, only none of us get back what was ours. It takes a hypocrite to flee from occupied land to a land of the occupied, or maybe just a desperate man, but you can’t say that you don’t expect me to take responsibility when I say that I expect it from Israeli children who were born and raised on the land I consider my own, which is also the only land they have ever known. The two thoughts can’t be reconciled, and yet I live here, I want to plant my feet here, and I also hate that feet are planted where I lived before, so I’m ashamed. I know what’s yours.’"
These interweavings arise naturally, an inevitable part of telling the stories of these characters because they are an inextricable part, and hence never feel like a distraction.
The book is not quite perfect. The pacing is uneven - there are times where the plot seems to spin wheels when it shouldn't. Some of Billie's early dialogue feels a little like exposition (a trend I am starting to notice with Aboriginal characters in Australian fiction, who sometimes seem to want to explain colonialism and how it has personally affected them to the main character as soon as they meet them). And I'm not sure the book really needed the bushfire, as opposed to the impeding threat of it. But these are quibbles in a book which manages to draw out the complexities of living on unceded land, in a terribly traumatising world, without ever being about anything except Aliyah and her crew, and their extraordinarily drawn emotional lives.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel as if anything I write will not do this book justice.

Aliyah and her daughter escape the city to a farm in rural New South Wales. Aliyah has plans to develop a permaculture garden and hires Shep, a quiet, private Palestinian man, to help her. Aliyah’s childhood friend Hana also comes to live with them.

This is a beautifully written book with dreamy, poetic passages, philosophical conversations and extensive references to literature. Jumaana Abdu doesn’t talk down to her readers. Medical terms and Arabic are sprinkled through the text.

I particularly loved the development of the verdant garden, the harvest and the descriptions of the food that Hana cooked with the produce.

This book is about friendship, love in all its forms, community, dispossession, colonisation, culture, religion and so much more.

If you are a lover of small town romance, definitely put this on your TBR. Though it’s not primarily a romance, we see Aliyah and Shep’s relationship developing ever so slowly, through quiet conversation and quietly working together.

The climax of the story was excellent, with the house, nature and the characters all coming together.

The audio narrated by Violette Ayad was excellent and I was particularly thankful for her Arabic, which was much better than my brain could ever do.

[Alifa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

As an Aussie Muslim who loves reaching for novels with Muslim representation, I was stoked to discover a story about a Muslim woman navigating life in countryside Australia—a rarity in fiction novels.
Initially, I struggled with Part 1. The writing felt bogged down with overly complex words and intricate analogies that, instead of bringing scenes to life, made them harder to picture. However, as I read on, Parts 2 and 3 picked up, and I especially enjoyed the writing style in Part 2.
It was refreshing to read language crafted by and for a Muslim audience, which could also be followed by anyone who reads it. One character's sermons were particularly moving; they resonated deeply and made me feel seen. The humour sprinkled throughout the book kept me on my toes, adding a lighthearted touch. I also appreciated how Jumaana carefully unveiled the layers of each character, revealing the 'why' behind their complex personalities.
Overall a good read. I look forward to reading her future work.

[Vireya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'll admit there are things about this book I don't understand. The weird metaphors that just don't make sense in English are perhaps examples of translations of things that work in their original language. And maybe that's the point of them?

There is no explanation in the book as to why Aliyah never calls "Shep" by his real name. And weirdly no-one else in the book calls him anything! I know some Muslim women never say their husband's name, and perhaps in the book this is a clue about what will happen.

Aliyah has a car and a drivers' licence, and yet to visit the mosque, and for several other journeys, she travels illegally in the back of Shep's ute. (Currently a fine of at least $400 and 3 demerit points in NSW.) A woman's life is not worth protecting with a proper seat and seatbelt, just in case someone thinks she is engaging in immoral behaviour by being in a car with a man? If it is that important, why didn't she drive herself in her own car to the mosque? Every time she was put in the back like cargo I got angrier!

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Don't you know I can't live without you?"

Magnificently written, moving at any given moment. I can only describe this book as insightful to the highest degree, although I don't think insightful is a good enough word for it. Challenging, thought-provoking, truthful. Reminded me of a recent read, Body Friend, which similarly aims to express a female friendship, something that can't wholly be described. This book delves deep into the life and mind of Aliyah, a single mother, a woman dedicated to her community, her daughter, her friend, her faith, her past life. There is so much we can learn from conversation and simple tolerance. There is so much more to learn about our own communities and communities experiencing conflict and prejudices in their own homes, in their own countries. Humanity is humanity; we are all we've got. Thank you Jumaana Abdu for writing so beautifully about things you know and things you want me to know.