A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
by Nathan Thrall
“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by Nathan Thrall is a nonfiction book that provides an immersive and gripping account of a tragic accident in Jerusalem and its aftermath. The story centers around Abed Salama, a Palestinian father, whose five-year-old son Milad is involved in a bus collision while on a school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The accident results in chaos, with children being taken to various hospitals across Jerusalem and the West Bank, some missing, and others unidentifiable.
Abed’s desperate search for his son is fraught with physical, emotional, and bureaucratic challenges due to his Palestinian identity. He faces barriers such as the separation wall, military checkpoints, and paperwork issues that prevent him from easily accessing Jerusalem. The narrative weaves Abed’s personal ordeal with the interconnected stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters, highlighting the complex tapestry of lives, loves, enmities, and histories in the region.
The book is praised for offering a human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine and shedding new light on the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth. It’s a story that goes beyond the headlines to explore the human impact of political conflict and the day-to-day realities of those living in its shadow. Nathan Thrall is recognized for his insightful analysis and portrayal of the situation, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by individuals caught in the crossfire of longstanding disputes.
Critical Acclaim
“A powerful evocation of a two-tiered society.”
—The New Yorker, named one of 12 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023
“Searing…essential.”
—Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times
“Magnificent ... a piercingly forensic account ... The book does what all good stories should do—it unfolds both minutely and epically at the same time. It does not moralize, and yet it does not shirk its responsibility to knock our sense of comfortable balance all to hell.”
—Colum McCann, The Irish Times, named a Best Book of 2023
“Nathan Thrall’s book made me walk a lot. I found myself pacing around between chapters, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in order to be able to absorb the brutality, the pathos, the steely tenderness, and the sheer spectacle of the cunning and complex ways in which a state can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of the civilized world for its actions.”
—Arundhati Roy, Booker Prizewinning author of My Seditious Heart
“A vital, important book.”
—The Washington Post
“I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding... One could read the book as a précis of modern Palestinian history embedded in the personal memories of many individuals, each of them drawn in stark, telling detail. To get to know them even a little is a rare gift, far more useful than the many standard, distanced histories of Palestine.”
—David Shulman, The New York Review of Books
“A quietly heartbreaking chronicle.... At any time, this scrupulous, salutary work would strike readers hard. Just now, it arrives in a cultural landscape shredded by assumptions that sympathy and understanding run only down a single route.... Not a word of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama encourages one-eyed compassion or selective truth-telling.”
—Financial Times, named a Best Book of 2023, Literary Nonfiction; named a Best Book of 2023, Politics
“Thrall is one of the few writers who can combine vivid storytelling with in-depth analysis of the occupation ... his expertise allows him to shuttle nimbly between the viewpoints of frantic families and Palestinian leaders as well as Israeli officials and nearby settlers.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“It is hard to think of another book that gives such a poignant, deeply human face to the ongoing tragedy of Palestine. Thrall’s evocation of both a terrible crisis and the daily humiliations of life under occupation is nothing short of heartbreaking.”
—Adam Hochschild, National Book Award finalist and author of American Midnight
“A book that is … by turns deeply affecting and, in its concluding chapters, as tense as a thriller.… Such storytelling is in itself a radical act, for it insists on humanising those who are so often discussed – especially at times of intense violence, like now – solely as constituent parts of a category: ‘Palestinians.’ … Thrall’s achievement is to make us see [the occupation]– and feel its injustice – afresh.”
—Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
“If it’s hard to make people care about someone they’ve never met, it’s even harder when that someone is behind a wall. But in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, the journalist Nathan Thrall makes a virtue of that. The book reports a profoundly difficult story ... made more difficult by where it occurs: On the Palestinian side of Israel’s separation barrier... [Thrall] manages to find drama in the most boring thing the Israelis do—which is bend the situation to their will through administration.”
—Time, named a Top 10 Nonfiction Book of 2023
“This brilliant and heartbreaking book is a masterpiece. It reads like a novel, yet is all sadly true. I finished it in tears.”
—James Rebanks, New York Times bestselling author of Pastoral Song
“Thrall captures both the universality and the specificity of the experiences of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation ... the book builds a relentless case that this crash and the ensuing trauma must be remembered. It was all so predictable—and could easily happen again.”
—The Economist, named a Best Book of 2023
“Haunting.”
—The New Republic, named a Best Book of 2023
“Shows with devastating power ... the way that politics seeps into every aspect of the lives of those in Palestine. At a time when facts have become weapons in this seemingly endless conflict, this is a book that speaks with truth of ordinary lives trapped in the jaws of history.”
—The Observer (UK)
“Nathan Thrall has written an amazing work of nonfiction that I devoured…a beautiful book that...is powerful and far reaching in its portrait of life in Israel and Palestine.”
—Geraldine Brooks, The Saturday Paper
“The genius of Thrall’s book lies in its ability to unearth the lives, aspirations, and sentiments of his protagonists.”
—David N. Myers, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Thrall humanizes the consequences of systemic decay.”
—The Los Angeles Times, 10 Books to Read in October
“Like J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground or Javier Cercas’s Anatomy of a Moment, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is digressive narrative nonfiction as a major piece of political art.”
—Gideon Lewis-Kraus, LitHub
“Brings the reader as close to...reality as can possibly be done with words.”
—Ahdaf Soueif, Times Literary Supplement
“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book that captures the daily tragedy of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation better than any other I have read. An outstanding achievement and a must read.”
—Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans
“Thrall’s powerful and moving portrayal … of life under Israeli occupation is both a painful reminder of the costs of conflict and, in its insistence on the humanity of its protagonists, both Israeli and Palestinian, a glimmer of hope.”
—Foreign Affairs
“One of the most effective presentations of quotidian injustice I have read, precisely because the story Thrall narrates is not a matter of the gory violence that has become so prevalent in the region since.”
―Samuel Moyn, The New Statesman, named a Best Book of 2023
“Extensive and intimate”
—The Forward, named a Best Jewish Book of 2023
“Combines heart-wrenching prose with rare political insight.”
—Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens
“Gut-wrenching.”
―The Guardian (Australia)
“A meticulously reported work...painfully poignant.”
―Haaretz
“Difficult to put down.”
—DAWN
“The real power of the book is that it does not try to contort Palestinians into figures indistinguishable from the reader but rather deconstructs the very idea of ‘the other.’”
―Jacobin
“An intricate picture of life under Israeli occupation…weaves analysis, history, and personal stories of individuals on both sides of the Green Line to explain the greater tragedy of the holy land.”
―Foreign Policy
“A Day in the Life of Abed Salama reminded me that the best reporting brings human stories to inhuman systems. I hope many will read it.”
—The Millions, named a Best Book of 2023
“Riveting... An eye-opening and empathetic analysis of a profoundly personal tragedy.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A heart-wrenching portrait of an unequal society.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“This impressive book shows us how everything in these Palestinians’ daily lives—from the mundane to the catastrophic—has been controlled, contained, and shaped under Israeli rule. Amid this struggle to survive, Nathan Thrall documents the best and worst of humanity: pride, bravery, love, stupidity, callousness and cruelty.”
—Sally Hayden, author of The Fourth Time We Drowned
“Thrall’s taut, journalistic account of Abed Salama’s daylong search to discover what has become of his son is an agonizing, infuriating, heartbreaking indictment of Israel’s occupation. …An unforgettable and devastating symphony of pain and outrage and a demand for responsibility.”
—Booklist (starred review), named a Best Book of 2023
“Propels the reader across a geography that is partitioned behind walls and into enclaves, revealing in visceral, human detail what Israeli subjugation means, and how it shapes the most intimate corners of the Palestinian experience. With empathy and grace, Thrall transforms this incomprehensible, avoidable loss into an ode to a father’s love.”
—Tareq Baconi, author of Containing Hamas
“Thrall’s sweeping narrative turns what one might gloss as another depressing headline about a terrible but distant accident into an intimate, infuriating epic.”
—Andrew Leland, The Stacks, named a Best Book of 2023
“[Thrall’s] richly textured retelling…depicts without a didactic moment the fraught realities of life in a divided society.”
―Mother Jones, named a Best Book of 2023
“Propulsive ... a kaleidoscope of the aftermath of a tragedy, told from different viewpoints, with multiple lives coming together, and the tragedy made even more difficult because of obstacles Abed and others face because they are Palestinian. This is an immersive story of an event, with its aftershocks reverberating for years.”
—Bookriot
“An extraordinary and often very moving story…a deeply poignant account.”
—John Freeman, Reaction
“A beautiful, heartbreaking and necessary tale made that much better by the telling.”
—Counterpunch
“A true story that lays bare, in appalling detail, the cruelty that Palestinians have been subjected to on a daily basis for years.”
—Mary Gaitskill, Out of It
“A powerful call for empathy and understanding.”
―How to Be Books, Best Books of 2023
“A towering achievement. I’ve not read anything like it. Thrall takes the bureaucracy and infrastructure of apartheid and uses them to tell a painfully emotional, personal story.”
—Omar Robert Hamilton, author of The City Always Wins
“A harrowing eye-opener.”
―The Spectator
“A masterpiece ... an extraordinary achievement ... A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a challenge to ... anyone who does not understand how awful Israel’s occupation truly is. If they read it, and if they are honest, they will change.”
—Mondoweiss
“Could not recommend more strongly.”
—Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror
“A book that left me devastated, but full of appreciation for what it achieves...It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the cruel realities of an everyday occupation.”
—The Conversation
“Grips you from start to finish.”
―The Markaz Review
“Gut-wrenching…A ‘Rashomon’-like deep dive into a school bus crash in the West Bank.”
―Boris Kachka, The Los Angeles Times
“A masterful exploration...Thrall is a wonderful storyteller...An unforgettably engrossing narrative that forces the reader to confront uncomfortable truths.”
―Women in Judaism
“I was utterly enthralled by the quality of the writing, the humanity contained within its pages.”
―Nihal Arthanayake, BBC Radio 5
“At one level, this is a granular look at the bureaucracy Salama must deal with under occupation, but Thrall takes a much wider view, speaking with all of the Israelis and Palestinians who intersect with this unbearably sad story.”
―The Atlantic
“Suffused with an unshakeable humanity…a story of great political import.”
―Middle East Report
“Stunning and heartbreaking, in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama Nathan Thrall somehow manages to bypass the barbed wire of politics and partisanship to present a searing picture of what it means to be a Palestinian parent.”
―WYPR, The Weekly Reader
“A mighty book.”
―People’s World
“A reminder of the value of clear-headed analysis in times of crisis.”
―The Literary Review
“Renders the struggle over Israel/Palestine at the human scale.”
―Jewish Currents
“A moving testimony of the more mundane forms of violence that define life between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”
―Responsible Statecraft, named a Best Book of 2023
“A small private tragedy…becomes a mirror of Israeli-Palestinian relations as they currently stand.”
―Vogue
“Timely and deeply affecting.”
—The Bookseller
“In this luminous story of Palestinians striving to live under Israeli rule, there is much cruelty. But there is also great love—of parents for their children, of lovers for their beloved, and of people for their home. This book is transformative.”
—André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt and Call Me By Your Name
Named one of TIME’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2023
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Economist
Named one of the Best Books of 2023 - Literary Nonfiction by the Financial Times: “This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel.”
Named one of the Best Books of 2023 - Politics by the Financial Times
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Republic
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Mother Jones
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Forward
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Millions
Named one of The New Statesman’s Best Books of 2023
Named a Best Book of 2023 in The Irish Times
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Irish Independent
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Just Security
Named one of Booklist’s Best Books of 2023
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Responsible Statecraft
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Stacks
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Hindustan Times
Named a Best Book of 2023 by How To Be Books
Named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
Named one of Yuval Noah Harari’s 11 Recommended Reads of 2023
Named an NPR Book of the Day
Named one of the best books to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by the Financial Times
Named one of 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall by The New York Times
Named one of the best reviewed books of October 2023 by LitHub
Named one of 10 Books to Read in October by The Los Angeles Times
Named to Foreign Policy’s Best Books for Understanding the Israel-Hamas War
Named one of Vogue’s 5 Books to Understand the War Between Israel and Hamas
Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2023
