What do you think?
Rate this book
Among the Almond Trees: A Palestinian Memoir
A poetically written and bitterly sweet memoir about nature, death, life in Palestine, and the universal concept of home.
Palestinian writer Hussein Barghouthi was in his late forties when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. He had feared it was HIV, so when the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, he left the hospital feeling a bitter joy because his wife and son would be spared. The bittersweetness of this reaction characterizes the alternating moods of narration and reflection that distinguish this meditative memoir, Among the Almond Trees .
Barghouthi’s way of dealing with finality is to return to memories of childhood in the village of his birth in central Palestine, where the house in which he grew up is surrounded by almond and fig orchards. He takes many healing walks in the moonlit shadows of the trees, where he observes curious foxes, dancing gazelles, a badger with an unearthly cry, a weasel, and a wild boar with its young—a return not only to the house but to nature itself. The author decides to build a house where he would live with his wife and son, in whom he sees a renewal of life. The realization of his impending death also urges him to vocalize this experience, and he relates the progress of the disease at infrequent intervals. And, ultimately, he details the imaginative possibility of a return to life—to the earth, where he would be buried among the almond trees.
Palestinian writer Hussein Barghouthi was in his late forties when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. He had feared it was HIV, so when the cancer diagnosis was confirmed, he left the hospital feeling a bitter joy because his wife and son would be spared. The bittersweetness of this reaction characterizes the alternating moods of narration and reflection that distinguish this meditative memoir, Among the Almond Trees .
Barghouthi’s way of dealing with finality is to return to memories of childhood in the village of his birth in central Palestine, where the house in which he grew up is surrounded by almond and fig orchards. He takes many healing walks in the moonlit shadows of the trees, where he observes curious foxes, dancing gazelles, a badger with an unearthly cry, a weasel, and a wild boar with its young—a return not only to the house but to nature itself. The author decides to build a house where he would live with his wife and son, in whom he sees a renewal of life. The realization of his impending death also urges him to vocalize this experience, and he relates the progress of the disease at infrequent intervals. And, ultimately, he details the imaginative possibility of a return to life—to the earth, where he would be buried among the almond trees.
154 pages, Hardcover
Published May 17, 2022
5 people are currently reading
721 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 5, 2022
"Is it not time for my resurrection yet? I will ripen shortly with the almonds and pomegranates and roses, and I will say to these orchards, 'I have ripened.' And if I were to laugh, the sun would shine; and if I were to cry, the rain would fall. And I will go back to being a child again. And if I cannot do this now, in this life, I will live long enough in order to find out. But in the cycle of reincarnation, in my future life, I will return to the earth and walk upon it as a child-prophet."
Ibrahim Muhawi's translation from the Arabic, is very sensitive and his explanatory notes, as well as the introduction, provided lots of context and cues. Keeping the two aside in this already slim volume, the memoir proper is just 80 pages but it definitely packs a strong punch. Barghouthi is a superb prose stylist and the language is really evocative and luminous. It's as much a memoir of his illness as it is about his homeland and its current state, cogently deliberating on mortality and death as well as renewal and resurrection.
The narrative meanders back and forth in time, moves between stories within stories, borrows heavily from folktales and local beliefs, injects nature at every turn, and puts Barghouthi at the centre of a rich, meaningful web of thrumming connections linked from history to the present. Its intertextuality is limitless, drawing from both the East and the West to highlight a syncretic multiculturalism. The host of recurring images and motifs will lend well to rereads. A poignant, sensitive work that creatively quests outwards.
September 30, 2022
A powerful memoir that connected me with my roots. I was comforted by his words and feel like it’s for anyone scared of death or their loved ones dying. No one does poetry like the Palestinians!
December 4, 2025
Hussein Barghouthi (1954-2004) was a Palestinian poet, playwright, essayist, critic, and philosopher who had a particular interest in folklore. His son Átar Barghouthi described him as "Arguably, the undiscovered gem of Arabic literature…An outcast since childhood, seen and treated by his society as different and distant for being unique, he found his friends to be the rocks and trees of his village, and the words of his language." Translated by Ibrahim Muhawi from Arabic into English, Among the Almond Trees is Barghouthi's memoir, written during the Second Intifada before he died a few years later from cancer.
Áthar's description of his father raised expectations for an unconventional memoir, my favourite kind. Yet I wasn't prepared for Barghouthi's incomparable poetic, potent visionary prose. Having returned to Palestine after years of exile abroad, trying to reckon with the limitations of his "infirm" body as his people fight against Israel's violent occupation, Barghouthi's ever seeking spirit sought to perceive the world and his place in it through art, history, language, family, memory, through the natural and the spiritual world.
On his many walks through monastery ruins, almond tree orchards, by a river or cave, near a forest, close to a mountain, it beneath Israeli helicopters he poured out stories spanning from the time of the Canaanites to the future. Peoples' history, family history, land history, personal history. Histories not so much as cited from books but from the community, from ancestors, in a river's name, in a fox's movements; his own family history relayed as folklore, which felt realer to me than other more straightforward tellings. All layered together and interwoven with a rich range of references to writers, Mahmoud Darwish most of all, music music, much by Feruiz, to Buddhism to Sufism to Islam and spiritualities before all that. Barghouthi embedded himself and Palestine world history, world time.
Muhawi's translation excelled at conveying a text that read like a journal, a riveting talk shared on a house's verandah, and a clear voice in my mind. His introduction provided a helpful context with a more concrete, concise overview of both Barghouthi and the text and insight into some of his translation choices. I found some of his footnotes over enthusiastic with explanation—sprung, I think, from an anxiety that readers might be discouraged by some of the more poetic, philosophical lines. Understandable but Muhawi's translation prowess created a text in the writer's voice that was arresting enough...just plain beautiful enough to carry you in this short book.
In a memory, the author met an elder woman after the funeral of a martyred child. She sang to him. In the song are these lines:
May God grant you the stone of the house
And extend the reach of your life
Like the reach of the olive in the oil.
Barghouthi's next lines are "... if the olives can reach into its oil, then the Mountain can reach into its olive trees." This book can reach into you and blossom if you let it. There is so much here so much. I didn't tell you about the beautiful meditation on his, his son's and his wife's names as invisible cities. Or his bandit ancestor who played rabab or the uncle with the magnificent voice who descended into silence. Or the Mountain. You have to read it!
Áthar's description of his father raised expectations for an unconventional memoir, my favourite kind. Yet I wasn't prepared for Barghouthi's incomparable poetic, potent visionary prose. Having returned to Palestine after years of exile abroad, trying to reckon with the limitations of his "infirm" body as his people fight against Israel's violent occupation, Barghouthi's ever seeking spirit sought to perceive the world and his place in it through art, history, language, family, memory, through the natural and the spiritual world.
On his many walks through monastery ruins, almond tree orchards, by a river or cave, near a forest, close to a mountain, it beneath Israeli helicopters he poured out stories spanning from the time of the Canaanites to the future. Peoples' history, family history, land history, personal history. Histories not so much as cited from books but from the community, from ancestors, in a river's name, in a fox's movements; his own family history relayed as folklore, which felt realer to me than other more straightforward tellings. All layered together and interwoven with a rich range of references to writers, Mahmoud Darwish most of all, music music, much by Feruiz, to Buddhism to Sufism to Islam and spiritualities before all that. Barghouthi embedded himself and Palestine world history, world time.
Muhawi's translation excelled at conveying a text that read like a journal, a riveting talk shared on a house's verandah, and a clear voice in my mind. His introduction provided a helpful context with a more concrete, concise overview of both Barghouthi and the text and insight into some of his translation choices. I found some of his footnotes over enthusiastic with explanation—sprung, I think, from an anxiety that readers might be discouraged by some of the more poetic, philosophical lines. Understandable but Muhawi's translation prowess created a text in the writer's voice that was arresting enough...just plain beautiful enough to carry you in this short book.
In a memory, the author met an elder woman after the funeral of a martyred child. She sang to him. In the song are these lines:
May God grant you the stone of the house
And extend the reach of your life
Like the reach of the olive in the oil.
Barghouthi's next lines are "... if the olives can reach into its oil, then the Mountain can reach into its olive trees." This book can reach into you and blossom if you let it. There is so much here so much. I didn't tell you about the beautiful meditation on his, his son's and his wife's names as invisible cities. Or his bandit ancestor who played rabab or the uncle with the magnificent voice who descended into silence. Or the Mountain. You have to read it!
September 29, 2024
Barghouthi’s The Blue Light deals with his experience as student in Washington state with glances into his childhood and earlier adult years, while this book is a memoir focused on his life back in Palestine after 30 years of exile, with his wife and young son, as he is treated for what will be terminal cancer. It is work filled with wisdom, poetry and folktales. Rich with ideas and facing illness with a spiritual energy arising from his family legends, poets, classical and modern, and personal philosophy inspired by Sufi and Egyptian traditions. I will have more to say soon.
October 15, 2025
A folkloric, intertextual, and deeply literary and poetic piece of writing - incredibly thoughtful and smart translation cues and some truly beautiful sections. I love when a book makes me want to read 10 other books as a result!
October 15, 2022
A very powerful text. Too philosophical, too depressing for my taste. I felt the writer was in a state of delirium. A second reading is definitely a must to fathom all the hints and ideas in this memoir. Cancer is a slow death that tears apart the mind and the body. I am fascinated by the writer's knowledge and courage. May he rest in peace.
September 10, 2025
Hussein Barghouthi’s Among the Almond Trees is a poignant and lyrical work, at once layered and dense. Barghouthi weaves his memories and dreams seamlessly into the landscape, creating a meditation where personal reflection and collective history meet. The beauty of Palestine—its almond trees, hills, and villages—is evoked again and again, always in subtle yet striking contrast to the brutality of occupation and destruction. His erudition is remarkable: the text draws deeply not only from Arab poets but also from Western literature, with an ease that reveals his wide command of both traditions. I found myself awed by his references, though I realized I would have appreciated the book even more with a stronger grounding in Arab literary heritage. It is not a memoir nor a biography exactly, but something more elusive and dreamlike. Ultimately, it is a work of quiet brilliance, where sorrow and beauty are intertwined. I feel I understood much of it, but I want to let it settle—and then return to it after my book club discussion, when I know it will open itself up even further.
May 18, 2024
1 would have given this book five stars but for the work completed by the translator. This is partly because the first 34 pages of the book was the translator's introduction which basically told the story of the memoir so some would find little point in reading the actual memoir of Hussein Barghouthi. Also there is a 21 page translators notes at the end. I am surprised at this considering Barghouthi lived and studied English Literature in the USA
Nevertheless the memoir is the author's emotional journey back to Palestine after being diagnosed with cancer. He returns to his family home and to deal with his terminal diagnosis he returns to his childhood where he grew up amongst the moutains and the almond orchards.He takes moonlight walks observing animals trees and finds peace in the Inner Monastry.A wonderful and graceful memoir. Hussein Barghouthi died in 2002 at the age of forty eight
Nevertheless the memoir is the author's emotional journey back to Palestine after being diagnosed with cancer. He returns to his family home and to deal with his terminal diagnosis he returns to his childhood where he grew up amongst the moutains and the almond orchards.He takes moonlight walks observing animals trees and finds peace in the Inner Monastry.A wonderful and graceful memoir. Hussein Barghouthi died in 2002 at the age of forty eight
December 2, 2024
I have so much to say about this and him and his ideologies. Man, he was so confused. What I liked most about this book was his description of Russeifa; he described it so well, better than I ever could, and accurately. I will start quoting his description when someone asks me what Al-Russeifa is like.
(I'll write a proper review soon)
(I'll write a proper review soon)
December 23, 2025
This was a challenging read for me - the memoir of a Palestinian poet dying from cancer. Much of it eluded me because of my limited ability to understand poetry and because so much of this memoir was steeped in unfamiliar Arabic culture and mythology. But, it is beautiful and mystical and filled with emotional truths, and I may need to find myself returning to read it again in the future.
February 2, 2023
A beautiful memoir by scholar/author Hussein Barghouthi. Lyrical prose matches the landscape of our stolen land.
February 13, 2024
I fail this book with my limited understanding. It's just hard for me to grasp what he's saying through his writing. Nevertheless, it's an experience.
June 15, 2024
Probably closer to a 3.5 but feeling nostalgic right now. More like art than a story (but maybe that’s what storytelling is?) nevertheless was an apropos read for me while I was in Taiwan
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews