Tessa Szyszkowitz in conversation with Matthew Teller and Mahmoud
Muna
DAYBREAK IN GAZA
A year ago, a new era started for Gaza: A war, triggered by the
Hamas attack on Israel of October 7th, destroyed most of the Gaza
strip. Houses, infrastructure, hospitals, schools – but most
importantly: More than 40.000 people. The total destruction of
the Palestinian territory, governed by Hamas and inhabited by 2,2
million Palestinians, is a humanitarian and political
catastrophe.
As its heritage is being destroyed, Gaza’s survivors preserve
their culture through literature, music, stories and
memories. Daybreak in Gaza is a record of that
heritage, revealing an extraordinary place and people.
Matthew Teller and Mahmoud Muna collected
vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers
and teachers across the generations offer stories of love, life,
loss and survival. They display the wealth of Gaza’s cultural
landscape and the breadth of its history. This remarkable book
humanises the people dismissed as mere statistics. Daybreak
in Gaza stands as a mark of resistance to the destruction,
and as a testament to the people of Gaza.
‘A most significant collection, one that frightens, awes
and inspires, the timeliest of reminders of our common humanity
and the irrepressible force of the written word.’
Philippe Sands
Matthew Teller is a UK-based author and
broadcaster writing on place and culture, with a special focus on
Palestine and the wider Middle East. His 2022 book Nine Quarters
of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City was a Daily
Telegraph Book of the Year. Teller produces and presents
documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and World Service, and reports for
BBC Radio’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’.
Mahmoud Muna is a writer, publisher and
bookseller from Jerusalem, Palestine. He runs Jerusalem’s
celebrated Educational Bookshop and the Bookshop at the American
Colony Hotel, both centres of the city’s literary scene. Muna
writes regularly on culture and politics, with bylines in the
London Review of Books and Jerusalem Quarterly, among others.
Tessa Szyszkowitz is an Austrian journalist and
author. A UK correspondent for Austrian and German publications
such as Falter and Tagesspiegel, she curates Philoxenia at
Kreiskyforum and is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal
United Services Institute in London.
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