The Book of Disappearance Ibtisam Azem

The International Booker Prize Reading Challenge.

This is the first book the I have completed for the International Booker Prize Reading Challenge, and it was a difficult one. The 250 pages of this book drew out to almost two weeks of me struggling with myself just to pick it up. If you have been following along with our subscriber chat you might have read that I was contemplating putting this one aside unfinished. The problem was however that I cannot in good conscience review a book if I have not completed reading it, it would not be fair to the author, or in this case the translator, this is especially the case where the review leans toward the negative.

I have done a lot of thinking about this book since completing it and I have come to the conclusion that a review such as the one that follows need to be completed in two parts. The first part for the story and the second dedicated to the translation itself.

So buckle in —

The Book of Disappearance book cover and Ibtisam Azem author photo.

The Book of Disappearance Book Review.

“Your Jaffa resembles mine. But it is not the same. Two cities impersonating each other. You carved your names into my city, so I feel like I am a returnee from history. Always Tired, roaming my own life like a ghost. Yes, I am a ghost who lives in your city. You, too, are a ghost, living in my city. And we call both cities Jaffa.” — page 20.

First published in 2014 (this is important to remember), The Book of Disappearance was written by Ibtisam Azem, a Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist who is currently based in New York and translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, a poet, novelist, and translator.

The Plot.

The narrative of The Book of Disappearance commences with the search for Alaa’s grandmother, who is ultimately found deceased while seated on a bench with a view of the ocean. To navigate his grief, Alaa initiates a journal addressed to her. This journal functions as the principal literary device of the novel, providing a medium for Alaa to recount his grandmother's narratives of her experiences as a young woman during the Nakba.¹

Woven between Alaa’s journal entries are chapters set in the present, centring on his friend and neighbour, Ariel. A journalist, Ariel is driven to uncover the mystery behind the abrupt and complete disappearance of Palestinians from Israel, a vanishing act that left no warning or trace.

Interspersed between these two main perspectives are chapters illustrating the far-reaching impact of the Palestinian disappearance on various individuals' daily lives. We encounter a prison guard surprised to find all Palestinian inmates vanished during his rounds. A man begins his morning with frustration upon discovering his favourite café, owned by a Palestinian couple, is unexpectedly closed. Elsewhere, a man waits indefinitely for a bus that never arrives.

Highlights.

There are two clear highlights in The Book of Disappearance. Firstly, Azem beautifully creates the atmosphere and the fabric of daily life for those living within a conflict. Having no personal experience of war or displacement, I was particularly struck by how the huge realities of war remain in the background of much of the novel. The novel instead shows the resilience of ordinary life amidst occupation, where people still navigate their days through familiar routines, catching buses, drinking coffee, gathering with friends and family.

Secondly, I found the depiction of social bonds and shared anxieties between individuals on different sides of the conflict surprisingly impactful. It might seem naive to find such interactions noteworthy, why wouldn’t people living through a shared experience connect in some way, yet it illuminated a human dimension that had not previously occurred to me.

Drawbacks.

Putting aside the translation, a topic I will explore further below, the lack of a clear resolution or explanation for the Palestinian disappearance left me feeling somewhat unfulfilled. While I suspect this deliberate ambiguity reflects the ongoing and unresolved nature of the Palestinian conflict, as a reader, I yearned for a greater sense of narrative completion.

Another source of disappointment stemmed from the book's synopsis, which I felt misrepresented the true focus of the narrative. While it highlighted the Palestinian disappearance as a key plot point, the story's primary concern lay elsewhere. The central threads revolved around Alaa’s grandmother's lived experiences during a specific period, Alaa's contemplation of her past, and the resulting generational trauma that shaped his mother and his own life. The synopsis, therefore, created an expectation that the novel did not fully deliver upon.

The Book of Disappearance Translation Review.

The translation presents a considerable obstacle to fully appreciating The Book of Disappearance. While I approach translated works with an understanding of the challenges involved – accepting that perfect linguistic equivalence is often unattainable and that stylistic flow may differ from the original – the prose in this novel consistently felt labored and unnatural. The need to pause and reread awkwardly phrased sentences, particularly within the dialogue, became a recurring frustration. Examples such as "Elegant Geo sneakers," the often-repeated simile "Missing you is like a rose of thorns," and the stilted construction of "He will postpone listening to music until later" disrupted the reading rhythm and felt out of sync with the surrounding narrative. Beyond clunky phrasing, the text also suffered from noticeable and seemingly unintentional word repetition within short passages. The recurrence of 'key' four times in a single paragraph, for example, lacked any discernible poetic intent and instead created a sense of carelessness in the translation, ultimately detracting from the reading experience.

To read more about the book, author and translator, visit The Booker Prize website page dedicated to this title, linked below.

And so that is the first of the thirteen books long-listed for The International Booker Prize 2025. I was concerned that I was going to have trouble finding some of these title, however since completing The Book of Disappearance, three other titles from the list have dropped into my lap. The first was There’s A Monster Behind the Door written by Written by Gaëlle Bélem and translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert which I have been able to acquire as an e-book from my state library. At the time of writing this review I am 25% through and enjoying the story a lot, it reminds me of a dark version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, but that is only so far and of course, plots change as they progress.

There’s a Monster Behind the Door book cover and Gaëlle Bélem author photo.

Consider this an invitation to join my in reading There’s a Monster Behind the Door and join the subscriber chat to hear about my progress and thoughts as they occur to me, I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on The Book of Disappearance, especially on the translation of the text.

Anyway, have a great rest of the week and I’ll see you on Friday,

C M Reid and the Ink-Stained Desk.

Reading by Lamplight. James McNeill Whistler. Source.

1. 1948 - Present. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through displacement and dispossession of land, the suppressing of cultural identity and political rights. Source.