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Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza
Finalist for the 2026 National Book Awards
A Millions Most Anticipated 2026 Selection
"This is poetry of the highest order, and a stunning reminder of what words can do.”—Omar El Akkad
"Hold this book, read every word, study every picture, notice the prints you leave behind—a reminder that no one’s hands are clean."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
From National Book Award Finalist Fady Joudah, a collection of poems, essays, and photographs that offers a Palestinian representation of not only the staggering grief, but the unwavering resilience and prevailing life force of a people and place enduring genocide.
Fady Joudah writes from the split perspective of a Palestinian American physician caring for the sick while watching the destruction of Gaza from the United States, a nation complicit in that destruction. He locates the paradox of his position in the seed a sparrow eats from his proffered hand; in his writing in English, the oppressor’s language; in the faces of Palestinian children receiving meals from aid kitchens—a glimpse into what his life could have been, and what is being lost in a war disproportionately impacting children and their families. Throughout the book, beauty insists on its survival not only through the Palestinian people, but also through the nonhuman world in which he takes occasional refuge from the devastation that humanity brings upon itself.
By placing before readers a series of carefully chosen images from Gaza, Joudah presses his reader to comprehend that the experience of both the individual and the whole are integral to an explicitly Palestinian understanding of genocide, even if that rendering is a nearly impossible endeavor. Exhibit G insists on the immensity of Palestinian interiority, and finds in this collective act of creation a hyper-present awareness. “By claiming what is being actively erased,” Joudah writes, “I become presence.”
At once an indictment of genocide, a rendering of catastrophic loss, and “an affirmation of life instead of a staging of death” (Katherine Larson), Exhibit G insists that love exists in all its variousness, and that it is the only defense against a totalizing, destructive force.
- GenresPoetry
208 pages, Hardcover
Published September 22, 2026
About the author
Fady Joudah
33 books111 followersJoudah was born in Austin, Texas in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents, and grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the United States to study to become a doctor, first attending the University of Georgia in Athens, and then the Medical College of Georgia, before completing his medical training at the University of Texas. Joudah currently practices as an ER physician in Houston, Texas. He has also volunteered abroad with the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders.
Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.
In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of recent poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish translated from Arabic, which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
His book of poetry Alight was published in 2013.
In 2017, Joudah translated Zaqtan's The Silence That Remains.
His 2021 poetry collection, Tethered to the Stars, was cited by Cleveland Review of Books as a poetry collection that "does not teach us how to answer any question it poses with a stylized rhetoric, a self-important flourish; the poems model a lyrical thinking which prompts the question itself."
Joudah won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American writer of “exceptional talent. His work entitled [...] was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection Shortlist and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.
Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review.
In 2006, he published The Butterfly's Burden, a collection of recent poems by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish translated from Arabic, which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.
His book of poetry Alight was published in 2013.
In 2017, Joudah translated Zaqtan's The Silence That Remains.
His 2021 poetry collection, Tethered to the Stars, was cited by Cleveland Review of Books as a poetry collection that "does not teach us how to answer any question it poses with a stylized rhetoric, a self-important flourish; the poems model a lyrical thinking which prompts the question itself."
Joudah won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, given to an American writer of “exceptional talent. His work entitled [...] was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection Shortlist and longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 9, 2026
“And they say, they’d understand
if I went insane: How
can anyone with a heart not?”
favs:
• Citizen Science
• Wallah
• After the Genocide
• From Time to Time
if I went insane: How
can anyone with a heart not?”
favs:
• Citizen Science
• Wallah
• After the Genocide
• From Time to Time
September 29, 2026
At the time of writing this review, Fady Joudah has been longlisted for the National Book Award for this work of poetry. In “Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza,” Joudah continues from “[...](shortlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry and also published by Milkweed Editions) where he writes about the destruction of Palestine and its people. Unlike “[...]“Exhibit G,” is not a traditional work of poetry. It’s part poetry, part polemic, part history lesson, part visual protest, part appreciation for the spirit and love of a people systematically murdered.
Joudah’s justifiable sadness and anger emanate from every page of this work and readers (anyone with a heart or brain) will succumb to Joudah’s way of telling the story. He talks about the ramifications of the Palestinians being exterminated and how we as a world are not having honest conversations about accountability, passive acceptance, and exploitation of the mass murder of the citizens of Gaza. Joudah is not exploiting the devastation the way some media outlets do to justify the carnage or to soothe their consciences.
Within the writing and the poetry, there are photos throughout that highlight the love and spirit of the Palestinian people. I especially liked how the photos are primarily focused on beauty rather than on grotesque imagery. In the book, Joudah writes that the world offers up photos of the horror as “a form of self-congratulation, war crime as humblebrag while bloodlust is inevitable.” He turns that dynamic on its head by refusing to allow the world to brag or to seek justification in the photos he chooses. It’s a powerful way of using the photographs.
If there is a minor downside to the book, it's that some of the polemical aspects of the book are drawn out, and Joudah repeats the same motifs and arguments. I think some of the longer essays could have been shortened. Sometimes, it’s best to make your point and get to the finish line.
I can see why Milkweed Editions submitted Fady Joudah’s “Exhibit G” to the National Book Award. Words can’t adequately describe my reaction because the horror is so unbelievable. Fady Joudah leaves me with the thought that the Palestinians are beautiful and powerful and the world will never be forgiven for the destruction of that beauty.
Joudah’s justifiable sadness and anger emanate from every page of this work and readers (anyone with a heart or brain) will succumb to Joudah’s way of telling the story. He talks about the ramifications of the Palestinians being exterminated and how we as a world are not having honest conversations about accountability, passive acceptance, and exploitation of the mass murder of the citizens of Gaza. Joudah is not exploiting the devastation the way some media outlets do to justify the carnage or to soothe their consciences.
Within the writing and the poetry, there are photos throughout that highlight the love and spirit of the Palestinian people. I especially liked how the photos are primarily focused on beauty rather than on grotesque imagery. In the book, Joudah writes that the world offers up photos of the horror as “a form of self-congratulation, war crime as humblebrag while bloodlust is inevitable.” He turns that dynamic on its head by refusing to allow the world to brag or to seek justification in the photos he chooses. It’s a powerful way of using the photographs.
If there is a minor downside to the book, it's that some of the polemical aspects of the book are drawn out, and Joudah repeats the same motifs and arguments. I think some of the longer essays could have been shortened. Sometimes, it’s best to make your point and get to the finish line.
I can see why Milkweed Editions submitted Fady Joudah’s “Exhibit G” to the National Book Award. Words can’t adequately describe my reaction because the horror is so unbelievable. Fady Joudah leaves me with the thought that the Palestinians are beautiful and powerful and the world will never be forgiven for the destruction of that beauty.
October 25, 2026
from Exhibit G: Baby Moses & Khalas or Notes on Palestinian Interiority
160: Palestine in Arabic engages its humanity in full. Its defects are the certificate of its wholeness. Palestine in English is monolithic. In the mirage of polyphony, Palestine in English is monochromatic: a function of the hegemony and totalitarianism English imposes on it, even when despairingly in solidarity with it.
OR
Impossible to imagine the one exception to the lack of communities of resistance in the US without the initiative and persistence of Palestinians: the community of students who have risen up against genocide across US campuses. Inevitably, these students will disperse across non-communities of American life in various pursuits. Despite this disruptive turnover, college campuses persist as community centers of resistance. The power of the state comes down hard on universities to disintegrate the last, albeit flimsy, effective physical presence of community in America. Where else in the US today is a shared living space capable of organized resistance? Short of civil uprising, little will change. Short of stable and continuous communities, uprising is not sustainable, is a gesture. And as such is no resistance.
160: Palestine in Arabic engages its humanity in full. Its defects are the certificate of its wholeness. Palestine in English is monolithic. In the mirage of polyphony, Palestine in English is monochromatic: a function of the hegemony and totalitarianism English imposes on it, even when despairingly in solidarity with it.
OR
Impossible to imagine the one exception to the lack of communities of resistance in the US without the initiative and persistence of Palestinians: the community of students who have risen up against genocide across US campuses. Inevitably, these students will disperse across non-communities of American life in various pursuits. Despite this disruptive turnover, college campuses persist as community centers of resistance. The power of the state comes down hard on universities to disintegrate the last, albeit flimsy, effective physical presence of community in America. Where else in the US today is a shared living space capable of organized resistance? Short of civil uprising, little will change. Short of stable and continuous communities, uprising is not sustainable, is a gesture. And as such is no resistance.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
An incredibly moving collection that criticises the idea of Gaza becoming an ‘exhibit’, particularly for the Western world, but at least prioritises the voices of Palestinian people and the genocide through their eyes. Joudah also condemns how publishers only seem to latch on to Palestinian literature at times of crisis - profiting at the expense of thousands.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews