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Faysal receives a mysterious letter about the death of an aunt he can’t remember. Leaving his lover and his life in Europe behind, he returns to the village of his birth in Palestine and to his family’s extraordinary, deserted house, the palace on the higher hill. With a backdrop of violence and the permanent threat from settlers, Faysal wanders the once-lavish rooms as characters from the past return to shed light on his family story and on the story of his people.

With hints of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Brideshead Revisited, Karim Kattan gives a nuanced deeply moving vision of the tragedy of war and a picture of his homeland that feels entirely new to English-speaking readers.

The book won the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie.