It would defy me to talk about Palestine without being overtly political, and maybe that’s why Selma Dabbagh doesn’t even try to avoid politics in Out of It. Out of It is political in the sense that all novels can be conceived of as arising from and being shaped by their historical context, but it’s also, very literally, about politics. The primary characters spend their lives worrying about Palestine’s fragile material existence; they approach internal and external threats as tangible and political, not existential. Because of this focus, the plot of Out of It is predictable and topical, but it’s also a relevant dialogue between two opposing approaches to living in an inescapably political environment.
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