If I Must Die
Poetry and Prose
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”
This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvelous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family.
The renowned poet and literature professor Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City alongside his brother, sister, and nephews in December 2023. He was just forty-four years old, but had already established a worldwide reputation that was further enhanced when, in the wake of his death, the poem that gives this book its title became a global sensation. “If I Must Die” is included here, alongside Refaat’s other poetry.
Refaat wrote extensively about a range of topics: teaching Shakespeare and the way Shylock could be appreciated by young Palestinian students; the horrors of living under repeated brutal assaults in Gaza, one of which, in 2014, killed another of his brothers; and the generosity of Palestinians to each other, fighting, in the face of it all, to be the one paying at the supermarket checkout.
Such pieces, some never before published, have been curated here by one of Refaat’s closest friends and collaborators. This collection forms a fitting testament to a remarkable writer, educator, and activist, one whose voice will not be silenced by death but will continue to assert the power of learning and humanism in the face of barbarity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This searing posthumous anthology from Alareer (editor of Gaza Writes Back), a Palestinian poet and English professor who was killed by an Israeli air strike in 2023, collects his heart-wrenching reflections on living amid violence and deprivation in Gaza. Meditating on the power of narrative, he recounts how his mother's stories provided veiled guidance on surviving a "world controlled by soldiers and guns and death," and how he published short stories by friends and students as a testament to Palestinian resilience and creativity. The satire is darkly mordant, as when Alareer outlines his "modest proposal" for Israel to resolve its conflict with Hamas by eating all Gazans. Throughout, Alareer offers harrowing glimpses of life behind Israel's blockade, describing how an Israeli soldier once knocked him unconscious with a rock while "grinning from ear to ear" and how his children silently shook in bed as they listened to the screams of the wounded after an air strike. Most unsettling of all is how the contrast between Alareer's restrained prose and the violence he describes drives home the routine nature of the brutality ("We have grown accustomed to war"). The showstopping poem from which the collection takes its title will leave few readers with dry eyes ("If I must die/ let it bring hope/ let it be a tale"). Offering a deeply personal window on Israeli violence in Gaza, this shouldn't be missed.
