Palestinian Fiction: Ibtisam Azem for The Sleep Thief

Ibtisam Azem will be at Topping & Company Booksellers on Monday 5 October, talking about her novel The Sleep Thief. It's an evening of Palestinian fiction, and Azem is the main feature, with the Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar and literary translator Sinan Antoon joining her to round things off.

The Sleep Thief is Azem's experimental first novel. It follows Gharib ('the Stranger') Haifawi as he comes of age, gets drawn into resistance, meets lovers and pushes back against traditional values, all while railing against the commodification of suffering and dreaming of a Palestinian identity that transcends sorrow. Azem is a Palestinian author and journalist who lives and works in New York, and the book is her first full-length novel. She's also published a short story collection and a second novel, The Book of Disappearance (2024), and her writing has been translated into ten languages; she was longlisted for the International Booker Prize.

Antoon, who joins her for the evening, is an Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar and literary translator, and an associate professor of Arabic literature at New York University. Between the two of them, the night brings together two writers with deep roots in Arabic literature and a shared connection to New York.

The event is at Topping & Company Booksellers, 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT, on Monday 5 October. It starts at 7pm, with doors open from 6.30pm.