A Conversation with Nathan Thrall

Abed Salama's world is turned upside down when he hears that his five-year-old son's school bus has collided with a semitrailer. Frantically, he tries to reach the site. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy explores one man's journey in navigating the bureaucratic, governmental and military obstacles for Palestinians in Jerusalem as he searches for his young son. Along the way, Salama encounters a wide cast of characters whose personal and political histories become interwoven with his own. Jerusalem based author Nathan Thrall will read from his book and be in conversation with Professor Mostafa Minawi.

Nathan Thrall received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. He is also the author of The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Guardian, London Review of Books, and New York Review of Books and been translated into more than two dozen languages. He spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College.

Part of the Palestinian Studies Speaker Series

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Sponsors: Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) initiative, with support from Near Eastern Studies, Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Government, History, Jewish Studies, Institute for Comparative Modernities, and Society for the Humanities.