Nathan Thrall is an award-winning author and journalist. A Day In The Life of Abed Salama chronicles the journey of a father in search of his son, killed in a tragic bus accident. Through this close focus, Thrall exposes the harsh realities of life for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Nathan Thrall will be speaking at Duke on Oct. 21, 2024. He will be in conversation with Professor Rebecca Stein. The event will be held at the Washington Duke Inn from 5:30 pm to 7 pm (click here for more information).
What made you want to become a journalist?
If you asked me this question when I was younger, I might have had some rather grandiose answers on hand. But the more mundane truth is that writing has always suited me temperamentally. It's a line of work that rewards solitude, independence, heterodoxy, and a willingness to challenge power.
What sparked your interest in focusing on the Israeli/Palestine conflict with your work?
Just after I finished graduate school in 2006, an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit was patrolling the border with Gaza when a group of militants attacked his unit and brought him into Gaza. A few weeks later, the 2006 Lebanon War broke out. Having no real plans, I got on a plane to Tel Aviv, showed up at a newspaper in Jerusalem, and asked to start reporting. I was so clueless then that I thought they would send me to the front in Lebanon. Instead, they told me to go cover the annual chicken-slaughtering ritual of kapparot. I came to the depressing realization that it would be many years before I’d be permitted to write about the things that interested me. But I then discovered that there was one exception: book reviews. Newspaper editors would allow practically anyone to review a book, no matter how little their knowledge or experience. And that's how I started writing about things that mattered to me.
How has your experience been being a writer who focuses on the Israeli/Palestine conflict, while living in Jerusalem?
There are challenges to living in a society that you are fundamentally at odds with, but there is no better way to report on a place than to live there. To walk outside my front door is to see the deepest injustices, and to be inspired anew to confront them in my writing.
What inspired you to write A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, and how does it differ from your other writing on the conflict?
I had a number of goals in writing this book. I wanted to tell the entire story of Israel/Palestine. I wanted to depict a system of apartheid as seen through the eyes of the people subjected to it. But above all, I wanted to give the reader a sense of that outrage that practically any warm-blooded creature feels when they first witness the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule.
What message do you hope readers take away from Abed Salama’s story?
More than anything, I want the reader to come away with a punch in the gut, a visceral sense of what it is to live in Israel/Palestine, and an awareness that tragedies like the one depicted in the book are occurring every hour, every day. When I started on this project, I told my editor that the only way we would make a dent is if we put out a story that would make people cry. I want people to shed tears not just at this tragedy but all the other daily, hourly tragedies that they, as US taxpayers, are responsible for.