Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature 2026
In the year following 7 October 2023, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experiences of that day and the months of destruction and displacement that followed. From these encounters comes Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life, a selection of twenty-six testimonies from ordinary civilians aged thirteen to sixty-five, whose lives have been irrevocably altered by what may one day be remembered as one of the most savage military offensives of our time. Adapted from warning flyers dropped moments before a bombing, the book's title captures the impossible reality of life for Gazans. That reality is laid bare in accounts marked by unimaginable loss - homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated - and mechanisms of cruelty that defy comprehension. In gathering these testimonies, Yazbek brings into focus the human lives behind the headlines, and the survivors' determination, even amid devastation, to speak and to be heard.
Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi
Moving back and forth in time, mainly between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, the book follows Nafisi as she returns to an Iran where the English-language classics she loves are increasingly viewed with suspicion by the authorities.An essential book—and a powerful reminder never to take our freedoms for granted, nor to tolerate intolerance.
