Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

by Mohammed El-Kurd

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Mohammed El-Kurd has written a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798888903179
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer, poet, journalist, and organizer from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine. He is the Nation’s first-ever Palestine Correspondent and editor-at-large at Mondoweiss, the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and the author of the highly-acclaimed poetry collection Rifqa, which has been translated into several languages.

Table of Contents

author’s note(s)

one: the sniper’s hands are clean of blood
on dehumanization

two: the politics of defanging
on “humanization”

three: shireen’s passport
on the invention of the civilian

four: a life in cross-examination
on forbidden sentiments

five: tropes and drones
on discursive land mines

six: mein kampf in the playroom
on propaganda

seven: miraculous epiphanies
on testimony

eight: are we indeed all palestinians?
on identity

nine: “do you want to throw israelis into the sea?”
on irreverence

epilogue

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Rifqa

“Mohammed El-Kurd’s poetry is a home returned to us”
—aja monet

“These are poems that hurl themselves at the boundaries of what poems can do”
—Ahdaf Soueif

“A symbolic masterpiece”
—The New Arab

“Remarkable debut”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“The words that Mohammed assembles in his poems are … snatched from clouds”
—Mondoweiss

“We should be grateful that this is Kurd’s first book rather than his last, and that we can look forward to many decades of poetic innovation from this extraordinarily multifaceted and politically engaged poet”
—Middle East Eye

From the Publisher