In The End of Spring, Sahar Khalifeh chronicles the struggle of the Palestinian people with a humane depiction of Palestinian resistance fighters during the 2002 siege of Yasir Arafat’s official headquarters. Khalifeh’s tender and moving portrayal of her protagonists delves into the inner consciences of the men and women and children who were involved in the actual resistance—or were simply caught in the middle. These characters come alive through Khalifeh’s use of Palestinian colloquial diction, as does the setting, through her measured attention to the details of the natural surroundings in which the characters live, fight, and die. The End of Spring is a riveting novel that captures the reader’s attention from beginning to end. It gives a heart and a face to the Palestinian struggle.

Sahar Khalifeh was born in Nablus in 1941 and is the author of several novels including The Inheritance (AUC Press, 2005) and The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant (AUC Press, 2007), for which she was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2006. She holds a Ph.D. in women’s studies and American literature from the University of Iowa. She divides her time between Amman and Nablus. Paula Haydar is professor of Arabic at the University of Arkansas. She holds an MFA in literary translation and has translated several novels by contemporary Lebanese novelists, including Elias Khoury and Rachid al-Daif.