Book Talk – Gaza: The Story of a Genocide
Join us for a book talk with Sonia Faleiro (co-editor), in collaboration with Palestine Land Studies Center and the Center for Arts and Humanities at the American University of Beirut
GAZA: THE STORY OF A GENOCIDE
Date: Tuesday November 4 at 6:00 PM
Location: Basile Antoine Meguerdiche Conference Hall, Issam Fares Institute main auditorium, AUB
In conversation with: Maryam Iqbal, Seteney Shami, Ghassan Abu-Sittah
This event is open to the public
The proceedings of the book will go to UNRWA
About the talk
Ahmed Alnaouq recounts the devastating loss of twenty-one family members. Noor Alyacoubi offers a searing reflection on starvation. Mariam Barghouti examines the brutality of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, while Eman Bashir describes the phenomenon of a “wounded child, no surviving family.” These voices, among many others, illuminate the enduring psychological, physical, and generational toll of state violence.
With contributions from recipients of the Palestine Book Award, Arab American Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, Emmy Award, National Book Award, and Gandhi Peace Award, this collection also honors the late poet Hiba Abu Nada—killed in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Khan Younis, Gaza, on October 20, 2023.
All royalties will be donated directly to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Bios
Sonia Faleiro is the author of The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism is Shaping Modern Asia (2025). Her previous books include The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and finalist for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars, a finalist for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. She is also the co-editor of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide (2025). Sonia is the founder of South Asia Speaks, a free mentorship program supporting emerging writers from across the region and the co-founder of the philanthropic initiative Books for Gaza.
Maryam Iqbal is a journalist and former lead organizer of Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University. She was suspended for her role in organizing the Gaza Solidarity Encampment in Spring 2024, which sparked a nationwide campus uprising against the genocide in Gaza. She has since transferred to the American University of Beirut.
Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a multi-award-winning Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, with a worldwide reputation as one of the world’s leading specialists in Craniofacial surgery (facial deformities), aesthetic surgery, cleft lip and palate surgery and trauma related injuries. Professor Abu-Sittah is a passionate and active humanitarian. A British Palestinian, he has worked as a war surgeon in numerous conflict zones including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. He is Clinical Lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war injured children in the Middle East, and Board of Trustees of the UK based Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Seteney Shami is founding Director-General of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) since 2012. She is an anthropologist from Jordan and obtained her BA from the American University of Beirut and her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. She has conducted fieldwork in Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and the North Caucasus. After teaching at Yarmouk University, Jordan, she moved in 1996 to the Population Council in Cairo. In 1999, she joined the SSRC in New York as director of the Middle East and North Africa program and the Eurasia program. She also developed the InterAsia Partnership program hosted by the SSRC until 2021 and currently hosted by the ACSS. Her publications include Seeing the World: How US Universities make knowledge in a Global Era (co-authored with M. Stevens and C. Miller-Idriss) Princeton University Press 2018; and “South and North, East and West: Knowledge Circulations and Connections in a Disordered World” In Thinking the Re-Thinking of the World (eds. K. Kresse and A. Sounaye) De Gruyter 2022.