A Mask the Color of the Sky

A Palestinian writer longs to write a novel about Mary Magdalene in this stimulating English-language debut from Khandaqji, a former Palestinian militant who was imprisoned for his role in a Tel Aviv market bombing and released shortly after the book won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2024. Scheming to leave the Ramallah refugee camp where he’s been living and research the novel, narrator Nur al-Shadi passes himself off as an Ashkenazi archaeologist, thanks to his knowledge of Hebrew, light skin color, and an Israeli ID card belonging to a man named Or Shapira, which he found in a secondhand jacket. Disguised as Or, he travels to a kibbutz to participate in an archaeological dig. There, his burgeoning identity crisis is exacerbated by meeting and falling in love with two women. First, there’s Ayala Sharabi, a Sephardic Jew, who shows him a Holocaust memorial that was damaged during the 1948 Nabka, causing him to quietly wonder, “Does one tragedy create another?” Then he meets Palestinian Sama’ Ismail, with whom he longs to speak in their native tongue. The plot meanders, but the novel develops into an intriguing discourse on the nature of identity, especially with the narrator’s insights into Mary Magdalene’s metamorphosis in the presence of Jesus and the ways in which she symbolizes human contradictions, embodying “the dual presence of good and evil, repentance and sin, angels and demons.” This leaves readers with plenty to chew on. (Mar.)