The Lord

by Soraya Antonius

During the 1936 Arab Revolt in Mandatory Palestine, a young man gains renown as a magician of a revolutionary sort, traveling across the country and seemingly performing Christ-like miracles—meanwhile evading the British colonialist forces who seek to destroy him and the resistance he represents.

Set in Mandatory Palestine during the 1936 Arab Revolt against the British colonial authorities, The Lord is the story of Tareq, a young man from Jaffa who is capable, or so it seems, of performing Christ-like miracles. It is also the story of Miss Alice Rhodes, an English missionary who teaches Tareq as a boy, and who recounts Tareq's life to a journalist in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Considered an unremarkable student by his teachers, Tareq is nevertheless something of a magician. After leaving school, he travels and performs across the country, and soon rumors fly of his incredible feats, from walking through walls to averting storms of locusts to curing olives trees barren of fruit.

Tareq’s performances become increasingly defiant of the British administration as he urges his fellow Palestinians to rise up against their oppressors. This draws the attention of the British chief of intelligence, Challis, who will stop at nothing to crush Tareq and the resistance he stands for. 

With The Lord, Soraya Antonius recreates the extraordinary richness and vivacity of Palestinian life before the Nakba, painting a portrait of Palestinian society at once panoramic and intimate. A clear-eyed examination of a chapter of British colonial history that laid the groundwork for the conflicts that continue to rack the Middle East, The Lord remains as timely and poignant now as ever.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Novels, Historical

248 pages, Paperback

Published December 2, 2025

Reviews

[Ashraf Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية عن فترة الانتداب البريطاني على
فلسطين هذه الفترة التي مهد فيها الاحتلال
لسيطرة اليهود عليها.. الرواية لا تحوي أحداث
تاريخية لكنها تحكي قصة مقاوم عادي جدا
من الشعب كل ما هنالك انه ساحر يؤدي بعض
الحيل السحرية التافهة ويتعامل مع الإنجليز
هل هو ساحر حقا؟ هناك ترميز في الرواية
يجعلك تطرح العديد من الأسئلة.

[Robin J · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Lord by Soraya Antonius is a sharp, smart, bitterly funny, and, at times, brutal anti-colonial novel. I have never read anything like this, and it has leapt to the top of my best books list.

A reporter comes to Lebanon in the 1980s hoping to find information about a Palestinian magician, Tareq, from the 1930s, whose performances became increasingly subversive. Antonius's narrative shifts back in time and we hear from a variety of characters involved in Tareq's fate: an English teacher who taught young Tareq, a journalist who sees his early performances, a British security chief who pegs Tareq as dangerous to the British empire as well as Tareq's mother, a young married Arab woman Tareq helped, and other British authorities.

Each section starts abruptly without much context, making the reading a bit slow going until I got used to her style. Yet I love what she writes-- I spent a lot of time rereading her sentences to enjoy their artistry.

Antonius tells a relatively simple story that is complicated by a variety of characters and themes: the arrogance of the British, the inhumanity of the colonial project, and the harsh life of Palestinian women. Then there is Tareq himself - who is he really? The dry wells that suddenly produce water, the reporter's broken ribs that turn out to be only bruised, the "emperor has no clothes" moment at the British holiday party, is it all actual magic or simply coincidence and a need to explain the unexpected?

Antonius doesn't offer answers, but her observations of the British colonial system are furious and funny in a bleak, bitter way. Reading this felt like watching a performer navigate a high wire; I held my breath at times, wondering if she could pull it off. The end, in particular, could have gone so wrong, but honestly, it is absolutely perfect for the story she tells.

This is my favorite fiction book of the year.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taking place during the years leading up to the Nakba while Palestine was under British control, The Lord depicts daily Palestinian life as it becomes increasingly intolerable for the Palestinians as Jewish settler forces—in conjunction with the British military—arrest, torture, and kill Palestinian civilians and destroy or steal their homes and property. At the heart of the story are Miss Alice, the daughter of a British Christian missionary, who teaches at an English-language school, and one of her former students Tareq. The British bring with them their class snobbery and anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism that in no way benefits Muslims, who are seen as even more appalling. As with Leon Uris’s hideous novel Exodus, Muslims are variously described by the British characters as stupid, smelly, sneaky, lazy, and unprincipled. The British sense of the Muslim Palestinian’s inherent inferiority means that, in the instance of Tareq that guides the novel’s path, when Tareq scores perfectly on an exam that will allow him a pathway to better remunerated work within the civil service, Miss Alice assumes—without evidence—that he must have cheated.

Tareq is kicked out of school, his certificate denied, forcing him to find a different way to realize his dreams and financially support his mother. He takes up magic, performing rudimentary tricks for audiences in villages throughout Palestine. Being a roaming magician allows Tarque the closest he can come to seeing the world, by slowly expanding the geographical range of the village he visits.

Miss Alice isn’t sure whether she should feel guilty for the fate she has imposed upon Tareq, an unease increased whenever she sees him around town, his disappointment in her never shown. In fact, he remains amiable in her presence, wishes her well, and converses with her when he can—a residue of hopefulness on his part that a word from her could change his status.

While Tareq roams from village to village, anti-Jewish settlers mount increasingly frequent attacks against the British and Jews. A member of the British forces assumes that no one can innocently roam from town to town, that Tareq must be a scout for terrorist forces, and so a correspondence between the attacks and Tareq’s magic acts are assumed to be coordinated.

There must be an entire subgenre of fiction devoted to well-meaning Europeans arriving in countries with cultures unfamiliar to them, which they have no intentions of understanding but, instead, intent to impose what is in the best interests of a benighted people. We know already that, for such people, an industrious young man trying to support his mother, who also shows kindness to his neighbors, well such a man is only asking for trouble.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine Heart of Darkness but if Kurtz were just a chill magician. Also sometimes it seemed like the author was a gifted writer who only recently learned English—kind of like Heart of Darkness.