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The Lord
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.
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.
248 pages, Paperback
Published December 2, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 2, 2017
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.
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.
February 25, 2026
An interesting book some beautiful parts, some amazingly witty/ironic parts, some parts of just good storytelling. The writing was skilled but not exactly my thing. It felt a bit purposefully choppy and confusing, which I didn’t love. But I think that was more of a personal preference.
3.5/5
3.5/5
February 4, 2026
This is simultaneously a rich, powerful, and often beautiful (even when it is terrible things being described) depiction of life in Palestine before the Nakba, as well as a devastating indictment of colonial rule and oppression during the years of the British Mandate. The writing style (ultimately so impressive) and structure of the novel take some getting used to…but it’s worth the struggle to get into the story (stories) and to piece together the overarching narrative here—which is in the end heartbreaking for just about everyone (there’s only one irredeemable villain here, just magnificently rendered in all his banal evilness). There’s also wry humor, clever irony and biting satire, and even some unconsummated romance(s)…in addition to a gloves-off history lesson about this time period and set of events. Having some background knowledge is helpful…there’s a good introduction to the novel in the reprint edition I read that discusses both the novel and its author. That the novel is still timely is obvious…the roots of present-day horrors are in this tragic past.
January 1, 2026
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.
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.
February 5, 2026
“It brought no luck to Palestine to have two such wildly contrasting symbols of its nature, the austere mythical gnarled reminder of time lasting, eternity, and the luxuriant green and juice gold blowsy abundance of fruit and flower, simultaneity.”
Paints a vivid picture of life in Palestine before the Nakba and thoroughly reminds one of the callous evil of the British mandate. Never forget that the British are and always were contemptible imperial freaks! Hard to follow at times with some very abrupt time jumps and a framing device that also played with time. Full of evocative and powerful passages however.
Paints a vivid picture of life in Palestine before the Nakba and thoroughly reminds one of the callous evil of the British mandate. Never forget that the British are and always were contemptible imperial freaks! Hard to follow at times with some very abrupt time jumps and a framing device that also played with time. Full of evocative and powerful passages however.
February 18, 2026
The narrator of this book is an unnamed journalist in The Lebanon of the early 1980s.
She is covering present events but takes an interest in the past. She is particularly interested in a young man named Tareq, who grew up under the British League of Nations' mandate and who played a significant role in the 1936 - 1939 Palestinian uprising against colonialism.
The journalist's curiosity leads her to Miss Alice, an Englishwoman who was Tareq's teacher in a mission school. According to Miss Alice, Tareq was an undistinguished student but did have uncanny powers / magical powers that Miss Alice couldn't explain.
How Tareq puts these powers to use in the novel's story.
She is covering present events but takes an interest in the past. She is particularly interested in a young man named Tareq, who grew up under the British League of Nations' mandate and who played a significant role in the 1936 - 1939 Palestinian uprising against colonialism.
The journalist's curiosity leads her to Miss Alice, an Englishwoman who was Tareq's teacher in a mission school. According to Miss Alice, Tareq was an undistinguished student but did have uncanny powers / magical powers that Miss Alice couldn't explain.
How Tareq puts these powers to use in the novel's story.
March 6, 2026
Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read in a while. It’s easy to get lost in one of Soraya Antonius’ fast-moving descriptions of a busy fair or marketplace and have to double back and find your way through. On the very next page, though, she’ll linger over an image of cruelty or heartbreak, forcing you to pause with her.
“The Lord” layers a 1980s storyline over one set in the 1930s, and parallels are frequently drawn to show the way that, for the poor, rural women of Palestine, very little changed in those 50 years. Reading this in the 2020s, as the rapes, murder, starvation, and humiliation continue, was a depressing experience to say the least.
“The Lord” layers a 1980s storyline over one set in the 1930s, and parallels are frequently drawn to show the way that, for the poor, rural women of Palestine, very little changed in those 50 years. Reading this in the 2020s, as the rapes, murder, starvation, and humiliation continue, was a depressing experience to say the least.
February 19, 2026
A beautiful portrait of Mandatory Palestine and all the forces at play however, for me its characters were spread too thin and lacked enough depth. A true historical set piece though with some very sweet moments.
March 6, 2026
Purely as a book and exercise in storytelling, I thought this wasn't remarkable, but the content and provenance are. Antonius was a writer, journalist, and activist who mostly lived and studied in Egypt, Lebanon, and England, but who was born and raised into a well-to-do Palestinian Arab family in Jerusalem -- her father is George Antonius, who wrote a book in the '30s considered to be foundational for Arab nationalism. Soraya Antonius herself wrote The Lord as a refugee of sorts during the Lebanese Civil War.
This book is by design disjointed, and it admittedly feels like it -- Selma Sabbagh mentions a quote in the introduction where Antonius is remarking on how "frequently confusing, impenetrable" many of the stories she heard and recorded from Palestinian women in refugee camps were. This book was intended to possess a similar quality -- I found it a little jarring and often hard to get into, but knowing that it was deliberate makes me want to give it more grace.
The Lord is told by an unnamed female journalist in the 1980s who's principally interviewing an English woman, Miss Alice Rhodes, who taught Palestinian children at her father's missionary school since she was a young woman. The journalist is particularly concerned with her relationship with a boy named Tareq, a former pupil of Miss Rhodes' who came to be known as an itinerant magician of sorts -- at least that's how the British administration mostly sees him, whereas many peasants remember him as a miracle worker.
Tareq is surveilled throughout the novel by a man named Challis, the head of the mandate's military intelligence wing. He too scoffs at and waves off Tareq's supposed abilities, but finds him impertinent -- which, for so unscrupulous and vindictive a man, is all it takes to eventually lead him to pin whatever charges he can on Tareq, bogus or otherwise.
There are a number of characters who appear and dip out and reappear -- they're sometimes relevant to Tareq, but at other times are meant to just portray British Mandate Palestine from different strata. There are 3 major British characters other than Challis -- Alice, a journalist named Egerton, and a bright, ambitious adjutant to the High Commissioner named Farren who had a brief tryst with Alice. All three are portrayed sympathetically, though by no means guiltlessly -- Alice unwittingly but carelessly implicates Tareq, Egerton is more or less unwilling to risk his career to write the truly scathing pieces he knows he should, and Farren is no monster but is all the same a dutiful colonialist.
The Palestinian characters are treated likewise -- Um Tareq, Tareq's mother, is almost as callous and vindictive as Challis, selling and informing on her neighbors and son as an agent for the British and by extension the Zionists. Buthaina is a 'young woman' -- a girl, really -- married off to an old man as a second wife who Tareq begins to fall for after he helps her with her infertility problems. Like Alice, their relationship incidentally helps the British intelligence to nail Tareq -- and in the process her home is destroyed 'by mistake' by Challis' men.
And finally Tareq -- handsome and charismatic but generally not exceptionally remarkable in any other sense than the powers he ostensibly possesses/invokes. Not even particularly brave: Tareq is increasingly 'radicalized' (i.e., given no other choice) throughout as he witnesses and experiences the injustices firsthand across Palestine, but he still never commits anything more heinous than acknowledging publicly what all can see -- which is plenty enough for Challis to ultimately have him hanged in the final pages.
Though I don't think the narrative is particularly exceptional or expertly told, the setting and feeling of a place out of time is the real highlight. Antonius paints a Palestine, a Jaffa in particular, that's long gone in much of anything but the collective memory of a people, though the fate of those people is increasingly becoming much the same as the land they occupied -- heinously and meticulously liquidated and built over in broad daylight.
A book that's seemingly condemned to be eternally relevant -- the form is a little rough at times, but worth reading as a testimonial and expression.
This book is by design disjointed, and it admittedly feels like it -- Selma Sabbagh mentions a quote in the introduction where Antonius is remarking on how "frequently confusing, impenetrable" many of the stories she heard and recorded from Palestinian women in refugee camps were. This book was intended to possess a similar quality -- I found it a little jarring and often hard to get into, but knowing that it was deliberate makes me want to give it more grace.
The Lord is told by an unnamed female journalist in the 1980s who's principally interviewing an English woman, Miss Alice Rhodes, who taught Palestinian children at her father's missionary school since she was a young woman. The journalist is particularly concerned with her relationship with a boy named Tareq, a former pupil of Miss Rhodes' who came to be known as an itinerant magician of sorts -- at least that's how the British administration mostly sees him, whereas many peasants remember him as a miracle worker.
Tareq is surveilled throughout the novel by a man named Challis, the head of the mandate's military intelligence wing. He too scoffs at and waves off Tareq's supposed abilities, but finds him impertinent -- which, for so unscrupulous and vindictive a man, is all it takes to eventually lead him to pin whatever charges he can on Tareq, bogus or otherwise.
There are a number of characters who appear and dip out and reappear -- they're sometimes relevant to Tareq, but at other times are meant to just portray British Mandate Palestine from different strata. There are 3 major British characters other than Challis -- Alice, a journalist named Egerton, and a bright, ambitious adjutant to the High Commissioner named Farren who had a brief tryst with Alice. All three are portrayed sympathetically, though by no means guiltlessly -- Alice unwittingly but carelessly implicates Tareq, Egerton is more or less unwilling to risk his career to write the truly scathing pieces he knows he should, and Farren is no monster but is all the same a dutiful colonialist.
The Palestinian characters are treated likewise -- Um Tareq, Tareq's mother, is almost as callous and vindictive as Challis, selling and informing on her neighbors and son as an agent for the British and by extension the Zionists. Buthaina is a 'young woman' -- a girl, really -- married off to an old man as a second wife who Tareq begins to fall for after he helps her with her infertility problems. Like Alice, their relationship incidentally helps the British intelligence to nail Tareq -- and in the process her home is destroyed 'by mistake' by Challis' men.
And finally Tareq -- handsome and charismatic but generally not exceptionally remarkable in any other sense than the powers he ostensibly possesses/invokes. Not even particularly brave: Tareq is increasingly 'radicalized' (i.e., given no other choice) throughout as he witnesses and experiences the injustices firsthand across Palestine, but he still never commits anything more heinous than acknowledging publicly what all can see -- which is plenty enough for Challis to ultimately have him hanged in the final pages.
Though I don't think the narrative is particularly exceptional or expertly told, the setting and feeling of a place out of time is the real highlight. Antonius paints a Palestine, a Jaffa in particular, that's long gone in much of anything but the collective memory of a people, though the fate of those people is increasingly becoming much the same as the land they occupied -- heinously and meticulously liquidated and built over in broad daylight.
A book that's seemingly condemned to be eternally relevant -- the form is a little rough at times, but worth reading as a testimonial and expression.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 18, 2026
The Lord by Soraya Antonius is both a historical novel and an impressionistic meditation on life in Palestine during the final years of the British Mandate. The book unfolds slowly, asking for patience, and rewarding it. At its best, it offers a richly textured portrait of the Levant when it was unmistakably multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-ethnic—a world of layered identities and uneasy coexistence.
Antonius’s prose is dense, descriptive, and often luminous. Some sentences demand to be read two or three times, so evocative are they of a distant time and place. The writing lingers over landscape, gesture, and memory, creating an atmosphere that feels both intimate and universal. The beauty of the land and its people is unmistakable, but so are the conflicts that continue unresolved to this day.
Beneath its historical setting, the novel resonates sharply with the present. Many of the tensions and questions it explores feel not only familiar, but in some cases even more fraught today. The result is a contemplative, beautifully written novel that bridges past and present with quiet insistence.
Antonius’s prose is dense, descriptive, and often luminous. Some sentences demand to be read two or three times, so evocative are they of a distant time and place. The writing lingers over landscape, gesture, and memory, creating an atmosphere that feels both intimate and universal. The beauty of the land and its people is unmistakable, but so are the conflicts that continue unresolved to this day.
Beneath its historical setting, the novel resonates sharply with the present. Many of the tensions and questions it explores feel not only familiar, but in some cases even more fraught today. The result is a contemplative, beautifully written novel that bridges past and present with quiet insistence.
February 25, 2026
The author uses a lot of complicated point-of-view devices in this novel set between the 1930s and '80s. Perhaps these shifting perspectives echo the numerous ethnic groups mentioned (here and in the books of the Bible) and the varying accounts belonging to each of the great religions rooted in the Holy Land. The first-person "I" is a touch disappointing, but somehow it works from a feminist perspective.
This is a good addition to an "Israel/Palestine" bookshelf. I personally was leery of reading this after living through the period from 10/7/23 to US Election Day. But for people inclined to look at root problems, British colonialism, here examined in the interwar period, does not come off well.
Antonius throws in offhand nuggets to keep the gray areas strong: Armenians, wishing to keep a low profile during the Ottoman years. A Black slave, kept by an Arab family during the British mandate.
The writing can be both lovely and brutal.
This is a good addition to an "Israel/Palestine" bookshelf. I personally was leery of reading this after living through the period from 10/7/23 to US Election Day. But for people inclined to look at root problems, British colonialism, here examined in the interwar period, does not come off well.
Antonius throws in offhand nuggets to keep the gray areas strong: Armenians, wishing to keep a low profile during the Ottoman years. A Black slave, kept by an Arab family during the British mandate.
The writing can be both lovely and brutal.
January 3, 2026
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/...
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/...
March 7, 2026
Safely the most alive and rich conjuring of The Holy Land I've come across, the not so distant past is brilliantly resurrected alongside Jerusalem, Jaffa, the sprawling Palestinian countryside and the numerous groups living within it. The narrative is a bit fractured through a journalists time jumping perspective but a bit of attentiveness makes it rather easy to understand where in time you are. Maybe the most impressive aspect of Antonius' writing is how often her characters are so fully realized with often just a sentence or two of characterization. There is a funereal aspect to reading this novel in 2026 as all developments since it's publication leave it largely as a reminder that things were always going to get much, much worse.
March 7, 2026
Extremely worthwhile, unlike anything I’ve read, and there were several moments of prose I reread. This was a 3.75 for me, bc I had some trouble getting settled in the writing, and often implicit shifts in voice.
A picture is painted of everydayness to both life in Palestine under British Mandate where history altering chats are had at garden parties; and where resistance bubbles up via, primarily, mockery of the British. You sit with colonial officials as they choose between more indirect/direct approaches to horrors, and you see them undercut (but not thwarted) by the tricks of a magician (or more than that) that propels them on a manhunt. Antonius is kinda trolling in this book, and I loved that.
I was moved by the ending and won’t forget it.
A picture is painted of everydayness to both life in Palestine under British Mandate where history altering chats are had at garden parties; and where resistance bubbles up via, primarily, mockery of the British. You sit with colonial officials as they choose between more indirect/direct approaches to horrors, and you see them undercut (but not thwarted) by the tricks of a magician (or more than that) that propels them on a manhunt. Antonius is kinda trolling in this book, and I loved that.
I was moved by the ending and won’t forget it.
March 3, 2026
3.5/5 stars
The Lord has genuinely beautiful writing and while historical fiction I did enjoy reading about Palestinian life, the good and the bad. While short though, I found the structure of this to be a bit tough to get through. Stories and characters weave between each other often and the narrator, a journalist interviewing a teacher about her experiences fifty years in the past, often would jump in with a comment which pulled me from the story. Characters sometimes were vaguely referred to and I had a hard time identifying who was speaking about what and to whom. When I did understand however, I enjoyed the narrative and greatly descriptive writing.
The Lord has genuinely beautiful writing and while historical fiction I did enjoy reading about Palestinian life, the good and the bad. While short though, I found the structure of this to be a bit tough to get through. Stories and characters weave between each other often and the narrator, a journalist interviewing a teacher about her experiences fifty years in the past, often would jump in with a comment which pulled me from the story. Characters sometimes were vaguely referred to and I had a hard time identifying who was speaking about what and to whom. When I did understand however, I enjoyed the narrative and greatly descriptive writing.
March 4, 2026
Unique novel. I found it took about half the book to really lock in to Antonious' style but it might also be that around halfway the plot also shifts into a more direct gear. Historically and culturally important, lots of dry humor, incredibly tragic and foreboding in light of the progressive oppression of Palestinians through the decades following publication, culminating in the present genocide. Not exactly a rip-roaring read and at a few moments I felt quite lost; by the end it felt more than worth it.
March 6, 2026
written with a disregard for easy narrative flow that made even mundane table setting passages exciting to read. you read and realize you've jumped ahead in time three paragraphs ago or a conversation breaks from one pair of characters to another with no warning besides a gradual change in context. more cohesive than that sounds. the narrator and narrator's narrator combo is a joy to read.
jumbled to a purpose. trying to capture the lives of a people so often defined by victimhood. plays out the lives of cogs.
jumbled to a purpose. trying to capture the lives of a people so often defined by victimhood. plays out the lives of cogs.
December 20, 2025
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.
dnf
February 27, 2026dnf a quarter through, try again later
March 2, 2026
Conrad in Palestine but the Polish is showing
March 5, 2026
this might be the worst book i’ve ever read
March 8, 2026
I would give this book six stars if I could!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews