Vendor
	Fritz Agency Christian Dittus
Original language
English

HER FIRST PALESTINIAN

Saeed Teebi

And Other Stories

Saeed Teebi's HER FIRST PALESTINIAN is an elegant and surprising debut story collection that follows Palestinian immigrants navigating their identities in circumstances that push them to the emotional brink.

A doctor teaches his girlfriend about his country, only for her to fall into a consuming obsession with the Middle East conflict. A math professor risks his family's destruction by slandering the king of a despotic, oil-rich country. A university student invents an imaginary girlfriend to fit in with his callous, womanizing roommates. A lawyer takes on the impossible mission of becoming a body smuggler. A lonely widower travels to Russia in search of a movie starlet he met in his youth in historical Jaffa. A refugee who escaped violent circumstances rebels against the kindness of his sponsor. These intense and engrossing stories plunge into the lives of characters grappling with their experiences as Palestinian immigrants to Canada.

For readers of Susan Abulhawa's Against the Loveless World and The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah, HER FIRST PALESTINIAN is a much-needed and overdue contribution of stories that document Palestinian issues and culture in the North American diaspora.

Saeed Teebi was born to Palestinian parents in Kuwait and is now based in Toronto, where he works as a writer and lawyer. The titular story from HER FIRST PALESTINIAN was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize

Available products
Book Published 2022-08-01 by House of Anansi Press

Comments

Teebi perfectly captures intergenerational and intercultural tension in stories as brilliant and cutting as finely hewn diamonds. -- Booklist

The titular story from HER FIRST PALESTINIAN was shortlisted for the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. Read more...

A finalist for the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Winner to be announced on November 2, 2022. The jury writes: "Sometimes a writer comes along whose stories are not only complex and full and exquisitely written, but whose vision and political voice feels necessary. In Her First Palestinian, Saeed Teebi coaxes the reader in a certain direction, and then flips the narrative so that now we are complicit, and we see our own guilt in the great divide that exists between the privileged and the stranger. Teebi does this with subtle humour and a wry tone. He does not preach, yet his writing expresses a certain fervour that is essential. He is a vital voice."