What do you think?
Rate this book
Every Moment Is a Life: Gaza in the Time of Genocide
Not yet published
Expected 10 Feb 26Compiled by bestselling author susan abulhawa, an Arabic-English bilingual anthology of essays from eighteen young Palestinian writers trying to survive the genocide in Gaza.
In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice using her medical credentials. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss—of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They’d fled from place to place as Israel’s colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community.
Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram’s loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr’s mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents.
Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life in the holocaust of our time, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These essays are raw and real, capturing human moments—buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee—all set against the backdrop of history’s first livestreamed genocide. With courage, anger, love, agony, and—impossibly—hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever.
*All proceeds go to the contributors and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival to be redistributed as aid in Gaza
In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice using her medical credentials. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss—of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They’d fled from place to place as Israel’s colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community.
Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram’s loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr’s mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents.
Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life in the holocaust of our time, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These essays are raw and real, capturing human moments—buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee—all set against the backdrop of history’s first livestreamed genocide. With courage, anger, love, agony, and—impossibly—hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever.
*All proceeds go to the contributors and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival to be redistributed as aid in Gaza
- GenresNonfictionEssays
224 pages, Paperback
Expected publication February 10, 2026
210 people want to read
About the author
Susan Abulhawa
13 books5,873 followersAlso Susan Abulhawa
(Arabic: سوزان أبو الهوى)
susan abulhawa was born to refugees of the 1967 war when Israel captured what remained of Palestine, including Jerusalem. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter. She is the founder and President of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, was likewise a bestseller, translated into 20 languages. The reach of her books and volume of her readership have made abulhawa one of the most widely read Arab authors in the world. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World is out August 25, 2020.
(Arabic: سوزان أبو الهوى)
susan abulhawa was born to refugees of the 1967 war when Israel captured what remained of Palestine, including Jerusalem. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter. She is the founder and President of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, translated into 30 languages. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water, was likewise a bestseller, translated into 20 languages. The reach of her books and volume of her readership have made abulhawa one of the most widely read Arab authors in the world. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World is out August 25, 2020.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Read
November 11, 2025abulhawa talks in the intro about how she told those young writers to focus on details, on precise feelings, on what their own senses could record. and i wish she didn't, because that just ensured those stories slice through your heart so much harder. it's unbearable. after over two years of watching a live-stream of a genocide, a simple written story can still make you wanna scream.
October 28, 2025
Susan Abulhawa, a world-class writer and exemplary literary citizen, has broken through the walls of censorship to bring the voices of Gaza to the English speaking world. In these deeply personal stories, Palestinians tell us what it is like to live through the mass murder and wanton destruction imposed by Israel on Gaza. The writings are detailed, specific in their renderings of the daily cataclysm. From sleeping with strangers, the frailty of tents, the sounds of killing, the fear and then reality of endless loss, from the indignity of over-crowded latrines, to panic of dreams, these writers bravely document their memories, desires, transitions from comfort to deprivation, the importance of a cup of coffee, of a memento of a previous life, of the recollection of a hope. A frontline teacher, Abulhawa makes describing the impossible, doable, and the world is made more intelligent by this massive accomplishment.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Susan Abulhawa’s Every Moment Is a Life is a searing, uncompromising testament to human suffering and endurance in Gaza in the wake of the Israeli incursion following the October 7 massacre in Israel. Slim in volume yet immense in emotional and moral weight, this collection of essays bears witness to lives shattered by violence, displacement, and relentless loss. It is not a book one reads casually or quickly; rather, it demands pauses, silences, and a willingness to sit with profound discomfort.
Abulhawa curates and presents the voices of Gaza’s survivors with a restraint that heightens their power. These are not abstract political arguments or distant statistics, but intimate accounts of indignities endured, families torn apart, and the daily terror of existence under siege. The language—rendered with care in both English and Arabic—retains a raw immediacy that makes the reader feel less like an observer and more like a witness. The pain expressed in these pages is unvarnished and deeply human, so much so that reading more than a few essays at a time can feel overwhelming.
What makes Every Moment Is a Life especially devastating is its insistence on the individuality of suffering. Each essay affirms that every life lost, every childhood interrupted, every moment stolen by violence carries its own irreplaceable weight. In doing so, the book resists the numbing effect of large-scale tragedy and restores moral clarity: these are not faceless casualties, but people whose inner lives, memories, and hopes matter.
At its core, this work forces readers to confront the enduring truth of humanity’s capacity for cruelty—man’s inhumanity to man—while also illuminating the fragile persistence of dignity amid devastation. There are glimmers of resilience and love threaded through the darkness, but they do not soften the horror; instead, they underscore what is at stake. Abulhawa does not offer easy answers or consolations. The hope that emerges is tentative and hard-won: a hope that bearing witness might itself be an act of resistance, and that acknowledgment may one day give way to justice.
Every Moment Is a Life is a painful, necessary book. It asks much of its readers—empathy, courage, and moral attention—but what it offers in return is profound: a reminder that to look away is to participate in erasure, and that to read, to listen, and to remember is to affirm life itself, even in the darkest of times.
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.
Abulhawa curates and presents the voices of Gaza’s survivors with a restraint that heightens their power. These are not abstract political arguments or distant statistics, but intimate accounts of indignities endured, families torn apart, and the daily terror of existence under siege. The language—rendered with care in both English and Arabic—retains a raw immediacy that makes the reader feel less like an observer and more like a witness. The pain expressed in these pages is unvarnished and deeply human, so much so that reading more than a few essays at a time can feel overwhelming.
What makes Every Moment Is a Life especially devastating is its insistence on the individuality of suffering. Each essay affirms that every life lost, every childhood interrupted, every moment stolen by violence carries its own irreplaceable weight. In doing so, the book resists the numbing effect of large-scale tragedy and restores moral clarity: these are not faceless casualties, but people whose inner lives, memories, and hopes matter.
At its core, this work forces readers to confront the enduring truth of humanity’s capacity for cruelty—man’s inhumanity to man—while also illuminating the fragile persistence of dignity amid devastation. There are glimmers of resilience and love threaded through the darkness, but they do not soften the horror; instead, they underscore what is at stake. Abulhawa does not offer easy answers or consolations. The hope that emerges is tentative and hard-won: a hope that bearing witness might itself be an act of resistance, and that acknowledgment may one day give way to justice.
Every Moment Is a Life is a painful, necessary book. It asks much of its readers—empathy, courage, and moral attention—but what it offers in return is profound: a reminder that to look away is to participate in erasure, and that to read, to listen, and to remember is to affirm life itself, even in the darkest of times.
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.
December 6, 2025
Somehow, some way, a group of Palestinians gathered in the midst of genocide to learn how to write the stories of their real lives.
Each chapter is a story, representing whatever each author wished for us to know. I can't do justice to the content here. I think this is one you just pick up and read yourself. You won't regret it. Also, keep reading past the last story to learn about and see each author.
"One charred fragment escaped the blaze ... It bore just two words, untouched by the fire: 'the living.'"
Note that half of the book is an English translation and the other half is the original Arabic.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Atria/One Signal Publishers | Simon & Schuster for the advance copy.
Each chapter is a story, representing whatever each author wished for us to know. I can't do justice to the content here. I think this is one you just pick up and read yourself. You won't regret it. Also, keep reading past the last story to learn about and see each author.
"One charred fragment escaped the blaze ... It bore just two words, untouched by the fire: 'the living.'"
Note that half of the book is an English translation and the other half is the original Arabic.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Atria/One Signal Publishers | Simon & Schuster for the advance copy.
November 20, 2025
How can one even give rating or review to the experiences of those actively living and existing during a genocide?
This anthology is a reminder that regardless of social media or general media displays, there will be (im)perfect victims, yet nevertheless all stories of Gaza should be shared and heard. The authors who contributed to this anthology hold steadfast to their truths with every page and every word; readers will have no choice but to listen and witness.
Though I was given an ARC, all proceeds from the book go directly to the contributors in Gaza and to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, so I will be purchasing a copy once it is published
This anthology is a reminder that regardless of social media or general media displays, there will be (im)perfect victims, yet nevertheless all stories of Gaza should be shared and heard. The authors who contributed to this anthology hold steadfast to their truths with every page and every word; readers will have no choice but to listen and witness.
Though I was given an ARC, all proceeds from the book go directly to the contributors in Gaza and to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, so I will be purchasing a copy once it is published
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
full review to come!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews