Atef Abu Saif (born 1973) is a

Palestinian Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...

writer. He was born in

Jabalia refugee camp Jabalia Camp ( ar, مخيّم جباليا) is a Palestinian refugee camp located north of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip. History The Jabalia refugee camp is in the North Gaza Governorate, Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of ...

in the

Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza. ...

. He studied at the University of Birzeit and the

University of Bradford The University of Bradford is a public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be created in Britain, bu ...

, before going on to obtain a PhD from the

European University Institute The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral teaching and research institute and an independent body of the European Union with juridical personality, established by the member states to contribu ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

. Since his literary debut in the late 1990s, Abu Saif has written a number of novels and short story collections. His novel '' A Suspended Life'' (2014) was shortlisted for the 2015

Arabic Booker Prize The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) ( ar, الجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية) is the most prestigious and important literary prize in the Arab world. Its aim is to reward excellence in contemporary Arabic ...

. He published five other novels: ''Shadows in the memory'' (1997), ''Tale of the Harvest Night'' (1998), ''The Snow Ball'' (2000), ''The Salty Grape of Paradise'' (2003), and ''Running in Place'' (2019). In addition to that he published two collections of short stories: ''Everything is Normal'' and ''Stories from Gaza Time''. Abu Saif edited as well a collection of short stories from Gaza titled ''The Book of Gaza'', which includes as well one of his own short stories. It was published by Comma 2014. ''A Suspended Life'' is going to be published in English autumn 2016 by Bloomsbury. His account of the

2014 Gaza conflict The 2014 Gaza War, also known as Operation Protective Edge ( he, מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, translit=Miv'tza Tzuk Eitan, ), was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that ha ...

was published in English under the title ''The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire'', with a foreword by

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

. Extracts from the diaries have appeared in Western publications such as ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

'', ''

Guernica Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the m ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The Dairies appeared in Germany 2015 under the title ''Frühstück mit der Drohne'', from Unionsverlag. Abu Saif's 2019 novel ''Running in Place''was the first novel from Gaza to be translated into Hebrew and published in Israel. On 5 February 2018, Fatah's Information, Culture, and Ideology Commission commissioned him as a spokesman for

Fatah Fatah ( ar, فتح '), formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, is a Palestinian nationalist social democratic political party and the largest faction of the Confederation, confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organizati ...

. Since 2019, he has been the Minister for Culture in the Palestine Authority. In March 2019, Palestinian Authority news organization

Wafa , abbreviation = WAFA , logo = wafalogo.jpg , image = , image_size = , image_alt = , image_caption = , type = News agency , products = Wire service, News, Photos, Video , formation = , fo ...

published pictures that showed Saif, bruised and bandaged, clothed in blood-stained garments and lying on a hospital bed. Wafa claimed that Saif had been beaten as Hamas attacked protestors and journalists; protestors were on the streets to demand better living conditions.

References

Assorted works

* * Palestinian writers 1973 births Living people Birzeit University alumni Alumni of the University of Bradford Government ministers of the State of Palestine {{Palestine-writer-stub