Deeply Moving Novel, January 3, 2007 (Amazon.com)
By Sonia M. Rosen “Sonia Rosen” (Philadelphia, PA)

Everyone should read Susan Abulhawa’s The Scar of David. This story of a Palestinian family’s journey through four generations of Israeli occupation offers beautiful, balanced, and intensely humanistic insight into the experience of both Palestinians and Israelis.

Abulhawa artfully demonstrates how both occupier and occupied fall victim to this conflict, yet she paints a clear picture of the magnitude of its effect on Palestinians - that over and over again Palestinians find themselves at the […] end of an Israeli or American rifle, in the groping hands of soldiers at checkpoints, and as the targets of missile massacres, always looking over their backs at a homeland razed by bulldozers and overrun by soldiers and settlers. However, what is most impressive is that she attains this degree of complexity around the Palestinian experience without dehumanizing Israelis or minimizing their fears and suffering. Rather, by telling the story as a series of first person narratives punctuated with third person accounts, Abulhawa is able to connect the personal with the political and give readers the sense that we are all ensnared in the same terrible situation, though its impact is certainly felt differently on each side.

Anyone who seeks to understand how this conflict affects the real people who live it every day must read this book, as Abulhawa leaves us with the hope of change and a strong sense of the vastness of what it means to live under and within occupation. But it is not merely the structure and the story of the book that makes it such a good read. Abulhawa’s masterful narrative voice, splendid poetic prose, and dialogue that dances alive in a reader’s head glued the book to my hands, and I was unable to put it down, often overcome with strong emotional reactions to the characters’ experiences. I finished this book in just 24 hours - it is rare to encounter such a compelling read!