A very special thank you goes to Ahdaf Soueif for praising and promoting my work as well as for making the publication of this novel possible. Her support of individual Palestinian writers, as well as her work with the Palestinian Festival of Literature (PalFest), is critical for those of us who write about a crisis that many would prefer nothing more to be heard about. Her writing is also an inspiration: In the Eye of the Sun changed my life in a way that few books have come close to doing.
Thanks also to Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, most notably to Andy Smart, Seif Salmawy, Jehan Marei for selecting this novel and to Kathy Rooney and Safaa Mraish for working on taking it through to publication, with special thanks to Jehan for her editorial comments.
At Bloomsbury Publishing, I would firstly like to thank the reader Wala’ Qasiah from Hebron who upon finishing Out of It told Alexandra Pringle, ‘But this is what it’s like.’ Thank you Wala’. That was important and meant a lot.
I am also indebted to Clare Hey for her eye for detail, detective and editorial skills in general, to Erica Jarnes for editorial work and for seeing the text through to publication, to Alexa von Hirschberg for being so enthusiastic, to Greg Heinimann for taking my idea for a cover and making it beautiful, to Jonathan Ring for being a patient photographer with a restless subject and mainly, of course, to Alexandra Pringle who did nothing less than realise a personal (but very specific) dream by backing this novel.
Thanks to the Bashir family of Somerset Avenue, Karachi, for their extraordinary hospitality when I stayed with them to work on edits in January, and to the O’Neils of Yateem Gardens, Bahrain, for letting me have use of their house for the same purpose the following month.
On a (more) personal note, special thanks to my children, Miro and Maia, for being fabulous, funny, warm and mad, to Ranjanie Nirmala Devi John, without whose unflaggingly high standards and dedication to my family much less would be possible, to Zeina B. Ghandour for giving me a notepad and telling me to just do it, and to Abdullah Mutawi, father of my children, ex-husband and friend.
A Note on the Author
Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer based in London. Her short stories have been included in a number of anthologies, including those published by Granta and the British Council. She was the English PEN nominee for the International PEN David T.K. Wong Award. Out of It is her first novel.
Copyright
First published in Great Britain 2011
Copyright © Selma Dabbagh 2011
This electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
The right of Selma Dabbagh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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ISBN 978-1-4088-2430-6
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