The Lord

In this stunning portrait of Palestinian life before the Nakba, a young man gains renown as a magician of a revolutionary sort—meanwhile evading the British colonialist forces who seek to destroy him and the resistance he represents. A reporter posted to Lebanon in the early 1980s, covering the Israeli invasion of the time, encounters Miss Alice, an English missionary who is nearing the end of a long life in the region. With memories that go back to World War I and the start of the British Mandate in Palestine, she unfolds the strangely puzzling story of one of her students, Tareq, a talented and charismatic youth who, on leaving school, took up the unlikely calling of a traveling magician. Moving from village to village, from country to city, Tareq observes the growing discontent with the colonial authorities that will erupt in a full-scale rebellion in 1936. He observes; perhaps he contributes. Among the people, he has come to be known as "the lord," while his comings and goings have also attracted the attention of Challis, the ruthless British police chief. A manhunt begins. The Lord re-creates the extraordinary richness and vivacity of Palestinian life before the Nakba, offering a view, at once panoramic and intimate, of Palestinian society and colonial occupation. A clear-eyed examination of a chapter of British colonial history that laid the groundwork for conflicts that continue to rack the Middle East, The Lord remains as timely and telling now as ever.

Soraya Antonius (1932–2017) was born in Jerusalem, then the capital of Palestine, the only child of the author and diplomat George Antonius and the socialite Katy Nimr. After attending Cheltenham Ladies' College and the Slade School of Fine Art in England, she lived for many years in Beirut, Lebanon, where she worked as a journalist, editor, publisher, and curator. A founding member of the Fifth of June Society, organized to educate journalists and the general public about Palestine, she also wrote and produced a documentary film about the Palestinian Revolution, Resistance, Why? She was the author of two novels, The Lord and Where the Jinn Consult. Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer of fiction who lives in London. Her first novel, Out of It, which takes place in London, Gaza, and the Gulf, was published in 2011 and was named one of The Guardian's Best Books of the Year by Marina Warner. She is also the author of many short stories, a radio play produced by the BBC, and the editor of We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers.