The Blue Between Sky and Water A Novel

“Precise, courageous, and dazzling.” —Teju Cole, author of Open City

From the author of the “masterful” (Fatima Bhutto, author of The Runaways) international bestseller Mornings in Jenin, a powerful, passionate story set in Gaza, of a family severed by colonialism, with a new introduction from Hala Alyan.

In the small Palestinian farming village of Beit Daras, the women of the Baraka family invite shock. Nazmiyeh is brazen and fiercely protective of her clairvoyant little sister, Mariam, and of their mother, Um Mahmoud, known for the fearsome spirit that sometimes possesses her.

When the family is forced by the newly formed State of Israel to leave their ancestral home, only Nazmiyeh and her brother survive the long road to Gaza. Amidst the violence and fragility of the refugee camp, Nazmiyeh builds a family, navigates crises, and nurtures what remains of Beit Daras’s community. But her brother continues his exile’s journey to America, where, upon his death, his granddaughter Nur grows up alone, in a different kind of exile. That is, until her longing for family and roots eventually beckon her to Gaza in this “luminous” (The Independent) and “powerful read” (Financial Times).

susan abulhawa is a Palestinian American writer and activist. She is the author of the international bestseller, Mornings in Jenin, The Blue Between Sky and Water, and Against the Loveless World, winner of the Arab American Book Award, The Palestine Book Award, and finalist for an Aspen Words Prize. Born to refugees of the Six Day War of 1967, abulhawa moved to the United States as a teenager, graduated in biomedical science, and established a career in medical science. In July 2001, she founded Playgrounds for Palestine, a non-governmental children's organization dedicated to upholding the Right to Play for Palestinian children.

Hala Alyan is the author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize—and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.