Yumna Kassab

Reading Palestine through South American literary and political history, Yumna Kassab reflects on the potency of symbols during times of repression.

When the regulars spoke of it, they agreed that Three Ropes was like a set. A character struts in, speaks a few lines over coffee and then leaves at their appointed time, as summed up by Macbeth.

The reader and writer meet in a temporary place. They speak for a while. Despite the debt, despite the effect, the book is shut, the conversation ends, and like that, the reader is forever changed.

The world lives with its distinct categorisations. Literature is placed to the left and the fantastical is to the right, but Borges made unique combinations of the two.

Later this trip will take on a mythical quality. It will become a reference point. Her birth country and her mythical country will be available to her as landmarks for her to understand her life. She will mention this trip when she identifies as a writer. She is selective with her words. She chooses the term formative.

Yumna Kassab is the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature.

Kassab presents a full and rich account of life outside of major cities, and, continuing the moral project begun in her debut work, House of Youssef, she draws us into this world to separate myth from reality.

In relentless succession, Yumna Kassab’s fictions scrutinise the psychopolitics of displacement in a political landscape fortified by a warrant for Islamophobia.