Sharon and My Mother-in-Law

August 1, 2005
Amiry's parents were among the thousands of Palestinians who fled from their homes in 1948; they went to Amman, Jordan, where the author was brought up before attending the American University in Beirut to study architecture. She returned to Ramallah as a tourist in 1981, but then she met Salim Tamari, fell in love, married him and returned to the city, now heavily occupied by Israeli troops. This book is an attempt to illustrate the life of a middle-class, Westernized woman in an occupied territory: the daily anxieties and struggles with curfews, roadblocks, barricades, body searches, gunfire, endless red tape, discourtesy and general harassment—not to mention the less than peaceful presence of a mother-in-law taken in for safety's sake. The account, often surprisingly good-humored (as when Amiry realizes her dog has a Jerusalem passport though she does not), is vivid but somewhat sketchily based on diaries and e-mails; it gains in immediacy and relevance to current newspaper accounts what it may lack in comprehensiveness. The book was awarded Italy's Viareggio Virsilia Prize, and while the writing is unremarkable, the work serves as an important report from the front.

October 1, 2005
Imagine living with curfews, unpredictable in duration and imposed and lifted erratically, in a place where every detail of your life is controlled externally. For architect Amiry (director, Ctr. for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah; "The Palestinian Village Home"), this place is Palestine, specifically Ramallah, on the West Bank. In a memoir that won Italy's 2004 Viareggio-Versilia Prize, she describes what it is like for an educated and cosmopolitan Palestinian to live under such conditions. What's amazing is Amiry's ability to portray the humor in very sensitive scenarios, e.g., her traveling between Ramallah and East Jerusalem as the driver of her dog, Nura, who -unlike herself -had the proper permit for such a trip. Amiry makes no attempts to sugarcoat her feelings about the Israeli occupation or even her own contradictory emotions about events she lives through: In response to the recent destruction of the old quarter of the city of Nablus, she recognizes that her first instinct was to lament the architectural loss rather than the human repercussions. Excellent for providing the Palestinian perspective on living on the West Bank through years of upheaval; strongly recommended for public and academic libraries. -Ethan Pullman, Univ. of Pittsburgh

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2005
"It was a Palestinian version of " The Bold and the Beautiful." " Drawing on her personal diary entries and e-mails, Amiry, an architect living in the West Bank town of Ramallah, captures the farce and sorrow of daily life under Israeli occupation over the last 20 years. Some readers may remember her furious appearance on " 60 Minutes" in 2003 ("No, this stupid wall has nothing to do with Israel's security. . . .This is the biggest land and water grab in the history of Israel"). But her book is no political tirade. She is laugh-out-loud funny about the soap-opera aspects of daily life in Ramallah. Even as she copes with her teen neighbor and collaborator, she has fun with the kitsch electric Mecca gift he gives her: Is it bugged? Is she paranoid? Then there is her mother-in-law, 91, who moves in after losing all electricity and water in her neighborhood ("Shall I pack my purple dress?" she wonders). The irreverence brings home the bureaucratic absurdity of checkpoints, curfews, barriers, and IDs ("Palestinians from Jerusalem who are Israeli residents but not Israeli citizens with Israeli travel documents"). But the suffering is always there: the reality of displacement, neighborhoods destroyed, interminable lines, shootings, separation, and loss. A prizewinner in Italy, this will reach a wide audience. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)