Sharon and My Mother-in-Law

Amiry is a Palestinian architect living in Ramallah during the second intifada — under curfew, under siege, trying to process the absurdity of daily life under occupation while also dealing with her elderly mother-in-law who has moved in and takes no interest whatsoever in the political situation. The book is funny in a way that is only possible when the alternative to laughter is despair. Amiry writes about checkpoints, military orders, power cuts, and the specific bureaucratic surrealism of occupation in the same register she writes about her mother-in-law's demands. The most humanizing dispatch from inside daily Palestinian life under occupation.