For Gaza

by Pascalle Burton, Jeet Thayil

English 356 pages 1 edition

For Gaza gathers a range of artists from across the globe who are using their work to show solidarity with Palestine, bear witness to the ongoing live-streamed genocide in Gaza, and hold power, complicity and silence to account. For Gaza is one of the finest collections we have seen in recent times of artists responding to the ongoing, live-streamed, inhumane and devastating obliteration of a civilian population – the displaced Palestinians, mostly women, children and the elderly of Gaza and the West Bank. The anthology spans genres – it encompasses fiction and non-fiction, poetry and art, essays and reportage, testaments and commentary, photography and anthems. As a collection, it serves to remind us that Gaza is not just a headline, a ‘zone of conflict’, an open-air prison where, to date, over 75,000 civilians have died, the site of a genocide, but also a place that has harboured stories and memories and dreams, all of which have been under savage attack. Put differently, what For Gaza does is make resistance the true language of artistic creation. In shunning silence – in gathering a range of voices to speak as one collective voice; a voice that demands fairness, decency, humanity – it becomes a book that advocates for Gaza, but on a larger scale, for a just world. Edited by writers Jeet Thayil and Pascalle Burton, the list of contributors includes artists on the ground in Gaza, as well prize-winning writers from India, Australia, Europe and the United States. This is a necessary, urgent, artistic response to an unimaginable political moment.