A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story

Paperback Published on: 01/08/2024
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Bookseller Reviews

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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
A vital, deeply affecting read.
At its core, this is a story of tragedy - one that is all the more devastating because it didn’t have to happen. Every factor leading up to it, from the ba... READ MORE
Drew from Waterstones Sutton
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Pulitzer winning, phenomenal writing
One of my favourite reads of 2025 so far - fascinating, but obviously devastating as this is the reality for so many Palestinians. Has been the reality for... READ MORE
Anna at Belfast
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An extraordinary - Pulitzer Prize winning - look at the day a school bus tragically crashed just outside of West Jerusalem. Using the lens of this disaster Thrall shows us what life is like in Israel and Palestine and does not seek to lay the blame for the crash with any individual or group, but shows how a network of failings, caused by the division of society there, made the situation on that day so much worse.

Synopsis

A gripping, intimate story of one heartbreaking day in Palestine that reveals lives, loves, enmities, and histories in violent collision

Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits: his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad's fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian.

Interwoven with Abed's odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.

A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.

Publisher information

  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • ISBN: 9781802060041
  • Number of pages: 272
  • Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 16 mm
  • Weight: 204g
  • Languages: English

Customer Reviews

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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
A magnificent and heartbreaking work of non-fiction that reads like a novel.
This is what the writer Arundhati Roy said of this book "I found myself pacing around between chapters, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in ord... READ MORE
Rafa Willisch
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Deserved the Pulitzer
Fantastic reportage, amazingly written and couldnt be more relevant right now.
H. Coleson
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Incredibly touching
Incredibly touching. No words are enough to express the precious gift this book is. Do not miss it.
Kitty