'A thrilling, defiant novel' FATIMA BHUTTO'A masterpiece' MARC LAMONT HILL'Wonderful ... Shines a ray of hope into some very dark places' MICHAEL PALIN'A fearless work of imagination' AHDAF SOUEIFWinner of the Palestine Book AwardNahr has been confined to the Cube: nine square metres of glossy grey cinderblock, devoid of time, its patterns of light and dark nothing to do with day and night. Journalists visit her, but get nowhere; because Nahr is not going to share her story with them.The world outside calls Nahr a terrorist, and a whore; some might call her a revolutionary, or a hero. But the truth is, Nahr has always been many things, and had many names.She was a girl who learned, early and painfully, that when you are a second class citizen love is a kind of desperation; she learned, above all else, to survive.She was a girl who went to Palestine in the wrong shoes, and without looking for it found what she had always lacked in the basement of a battered beauty parlour: purpose, politics, friends. She found a dark-eyed man called Bilal, who taught her to resist; who tried to save her when it was already too late.Nahr sits in the Cube, and tells her story to Bilal. Bilal, who isn't there; Bilal, who may not even be alive, but who is her only reason to get out.

Introduced at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as 'a Palestinian Charles Dickens', Abulhawa is an author and activist of international prestige