Where the Streets Had a Name

Hayaat lives in the West Bank after her family were driven from their land by Israeli settlers.

Grandmother Zeynab dreams longingly of home and fills Hayaat’s head with her memories; when Zeynab falls dangerously ill, Hayaat is convinced that some soil from home might restore her will to live.

Hayaat undertakes a dangerous – and highly illegal – journey to Jerusalem to fill a huumus jar with the precious earth.

This understated novel about one ordinary family struggling to survive in a world of random curfews and checkpoints, while dealing with the physical and mental scars of exile, is a moving and absorbing (although admittedly partial) novel about the Middle East situation.