Favourite books of 2024

And looking for yours!

Hello and Salaam my friends,

After 2023 becoming the year I started writing again, 2024 became the year I finally got back to books. With that in mind, I wanted to close out the year here on Letters from a Muslim Woman by sharing my favourite books of 2024 with you all.

If there is a recurring theme to the books I consumed this year, it’s that I went on a bit of a Palestine bender. Even the books that aren’t about Palestine directly still feel to me like they have a psychic overlap. It might be in the concentric circles of struggle I read about in some of the books by Black authors. It might be in the heartbreak that came through in some of the memoirs.

I struggle not to be consumed by the ongoing genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, primarily in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. I often wonder whether some of you wish I would talk about something else, anything else, once in a while.

The truth is, I’ve found it hard to think about anything else. Or more accurately, even when I do think about other things, Gaza creeps into every moment.

I buy a new jacket for my son and I think about children freezing in threadbare clothes through a winter in tents that don’t keep out the elements.

I catch a cold and I think about how comfortable my blankets are when others have no bed anymore.

I fall off my bike and I think about women having C-sections without anesthesia. Children enduring amputations while still conscious.

I have a hard time understanding how the world is still spinning. I feel certain that one day, we’ll all look back at how a genocide unfolded, livestreamed to the world on every social platform we have, and nobody who could stopped it.

In the meantime, my obsession will rage for as long as the genocide does.

Favourite Books of 2024

1. James, by Percival Everett. Novel.
   A reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Huck’s companion.
   I love stories that take a classic and look at them from a different angle. I’ve loved them ever since I read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf, back in grade 4. Same goes for Wicked, Wide Sargasso Sea, March, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
   This is what drew me in but it’s not why I kept reading. James is equal parts heart-breaking, absurd, enraging, and thrilling. And if you’ve never read the original, it won’t matter. I haven’t either.

   

2. The Hundred Years War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi¹. Non-Fiction.
   The seminal book on the history of this land from “the foremost US historian of the Middle East”, Rashid Khalidi, Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. Impeccably researched and detailed, the book covers the period between 1917-2017.
   If you’re overwhelmed at starting with a dense book, start with Professor Khalidi’s recent interview in The Guardian from October 2024.
   If you’re still overwhelmed and want a shorter explainer, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has written A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

3. The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Non-Fiction.
   One of the most important books of the year. Coates explores the importance of narrative and how we use words to tell ourselves a story, and to create our reality. The book explores various themes through three separate journeys, to Senegal, to South Carolina, and to the Occupied West Bank. He also laments the lack of Palestinian voices in telling Palestinian stories. I read this one in 2 days.

   

4. There’s Always This Year, by Hanif Abdurraqib. Memoir.
   Moving, brilliant and unpretentious all at once. Abdurraqib uses basketball as the through-line for his explorations of belonging, shame, excellence, and culture. Abdurraqib is linguistically masterful and just the way the words fit together is an enormous treat. He’s a chef cooking up a word feast. I listened to this one on audiobook and it felt like the entire book was one long spoken word performance.

5. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Novel.
   This is the one that renewed my love of book reading. A novel about the Biafran War in 1960’s Nigeria. I am ashamed to admit I had never heard of this war until reading this book, and I can imagine that’s true for most of us living in a western context. It’s worth asking ourselves why we don’t know about such enormous tragedies.

   

6. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, by Nathan Thrall. Non-Fiction.
   This book is the winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction along with several other accolades. Thrall uses the true story of “one family’s disaster (to) illuminate the complex tragedy of Israel and Palestine.”
   I’m not sure there’s another book that captures the insidious nature of occupation, separation, and control applied to the lives of Palestinians in Israel/Palestine. This book makes one thing clear: it’s not just Gaza.

7. You Could Make this Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith. Memoir.
   Smith is a poet and this book is poetry. A memoir about the dissolution of her marriage. Stunningly beautiful and searching. You won’t be able to put it down.

   

8. Between Two Kingdoms, by

   Suleika Jaouad
   . Memoir.
   I know this book is older but I’m only getting to it now and it’s extraordinary. Jaouad writes about navigating her cancer diagnosis as a recent university graduate. The book is equal parts heartbreaking and irreverent. If you love memoir as much as I do, you’ll want to read this.

9. Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano. Novel.
   I grew up in a household of 4 girls, and we fancied ourselves Little Women. This is a story of 4 sisters, their lives, their triumphs and their losses. A gorgeous, deeply personal epic that traverses decades. Another “couldn’t put it down”.

Two books I’m eagerly awaiting in 2025

1. One day, everyone will have always been against this, by Omar El Akkad. Non-fiction. Coming February 2025.
   Three weeks after the bombardment of Gaza began in October 2023, Omar El Akkad, award winning author of American War and What Strange Paradise, tweeted, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
   When I read those words, I thought yes. I am sure so many others felt the same way.
   This book “chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.”

   

2. If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, by Refaat AlAreer. Released December 2024.
   In the early days of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the fall of 2023, If I Must Die, a poem by Palestinian poet, professor and activist Refaat AlAreer, went viral on social media. A few weeks later, AlAreer was killed with his family in an Israeli airstrike.

   readalittlepoem

   

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This collection of AlAreer’s poems and various writings has been published posthumously. I am 2 years younger now than AlAreer was when he died.
Here is a man who used his life to teach language and to bring light to the suffering of his people. A man who insisted on their dignity and on the truth, no matter how inconvenient.
I wish for his words to reach every corner of the world.

Every week I publish reflections from my lived experience as a visibly Muslim woman. People like

Shambhavi Sarasvati

,

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What were your favourite books of the year? What should I read next?

1. One of the most common refrains I hear from folks defending the Israeli government’s actions is Learn the history.

Here’s the thing: I agree with this line. I think it’s important for all of us to learn the history. Especially those of us who are citizens of western countries that provide billion of dollars of weapons to Israel. Or who regularly give it diplomatic cover, even as the International Court of Justice, the highest court in the world, has stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a plausible genocide.