You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times

INSTANT BESTSELLER A vital, fearless memoir explores what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment, the effects of the genocide on Palestinian art and imagination, and that to even claim a belonging to the land from a country thousands of miles away is an act of subversion--a book that Omar El Akkad says "so perfectly contextualizes and humanizes so much of what has led us to this awful moment, and one that will be remembered long after." Imagination is a more powerful force than hope. Acclaimed author Saeed Teebi was at work on his first novel when the attacks on Gaza began in late 2023. The violence and cruelty of the attacks, accompanied by the assent and silence of international governments, stunned many across the globe, like Teebi, into a new state of permanent horror. What does it mean to be of the Palestinian diaspora in such a moment? What does it mean to be of a people who have sustained such a large-scale assault not only on their homeland, but their entire identity? What is the role of art, of language--of imagination--in asserting one's identity, when that very assertion is read as an act of subversion? In this incisive work, Teebi explores, with searing, razor-sharp prose, the effects of genocide on the bodies, minds, and imaginations--of Palestinians especially, and humanity in general. This is at once a memoir of one family's displacement, a scathing indictment of global complicity in the face of brutality, and a profound rumination on art and imagination as a means of defiance. It is an astonishing work of resistance by a major intellect, and it is both urgent and timeless.

About the Author :
Saeed Teebi is an award-winning writer and lawyer. His debut short story collection, Her First Palestinian, was a finalist for several awards, including the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize. His nonfiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail and The New Quarterly. Born in Kuwait, he resettled in the United States, then Canada. He now lives in Toronto.

Review :
"You Will Not Kill Our Imagination is one of the best books I've ever read on the psychological aftershocks of displacement, and the theft of home. It is not enough to call this work timely or necessary or clear-eyed, though it is all of these things. Saeed Teebi's writing does something else, something more. It cuts through the fog of moral cowardice that has enabled so much horror for so long. This is literature of the highest order, vulnerable and open-hearted, unwilling to flinch or submit to self-censorship. It's a book that so perfectly contextualizes and humanizes so much of what has led us to this awful moment, and yet one that will be remembered long after." -- OMAR EL AKKAD, acclaimed and bestselling author of One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This