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.
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You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times
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You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times
""" One of the best books I've ever read on the psychological aftershocks of displacement and the theft of home. ""( Omar el Akkad) This amazing book is a must read. "" It cuts through the fog of moral cowardice that has enabled so much horror for so long. ""I learned so much."
— JOHP (5/5)
A heartbreaking and challenging must read
"Years from now we will look back on this time with embarrassment and disgrace at how we all sat idly by while yet another massacre on an innocent populace took place. We won’t be able to feign ignorance, because we are constantly bombarded with horrific stories and images of what can legally be classified as genocide. And yet, there is a sort of desensitization either through lack of connection or compassion when it comes to Palestine. This story was heartbreaking and maddening in alternating parts, because it was so truthful. It wasn’t laden with emotional outbursts or plights towards an ongoing war, rather it was a frank observation on the Palestinian diaspora. How identity and home come into question when a group of people has been constantly under assault or abandonment. A large section of this memoir is a rumination on language, the power it has lost by being censored and washed by a colonial lens. When the language used by a victim must not offend the oppressor, how reality becomes skewed. By directly associating them with another historically marginalized group, this band of ordinary people can be labeled as inhuman and thus worthy of hatred and mistreatment. It was fascinating to find that this extends to Palestinians themselves and how there is a level of shame that accompanies this self censorship. The way words and stories characterize a people through a singularity. That a Palestine life of value has a requisite death arc, as though the small stories of their being are only given weight if the result ends in tragedy. The culture and joy we typically characterize humanity with is missing from the way we see this group of people. It is a difficult truth to acknowledge and yet it becomes hard to separate the Palestinian people from trauma, though they are so much more than that. This is not an easy memoir to read. I had to interchange it with episodes of John Oliver, but the truth is something that cannot be ignored. I hope everyone picks up this book and learns how language and hope and imagination are all integral to our humanity and contextualizes how the war is part of a much larger systemic imprint. Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for an advanced copy."
— Karisbookclub (5/5)
Q&A
Published date: Aug 18, 2026
Language: English
No. of Pages: 240
Publisher: Scribner Canada
ISBN: 9781668084687
Dimensions:
5.5" W x
0.6" L x
8.375" H
“[A] deeply felt memoir. . .Teebi reckons with what it means to be an exiled Palestinian writer at a moment when Palestinians are being killed by the thousands in Gaza. . . Yet Teebi persists, with grace and force, in trying to find some small hope in the act of storytelling.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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.
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