An Impossible Friendship

Sherene Seikaly, author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine:
Grounded in a Palestine that once was and spanning Beirut, Hamburg, Baghdad, Cambridge, Ambach, and Cairo, this brave and beautiful work traces an intimate circle of friends. As we travel time and space with Walid Khalidi, Sally Kassab, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Rasha Salam, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, we mourn their tragedies, just as the impossibility of their friendship invites us to imagine different futures.

Daniel Schönpflug, author of The World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age:
In this masterful book, Sonja Mejcher-Atassi retells the tragic history of the Middle East through the lens of a remarkable circle of friends, a group of brilliant young Christian, Muslim, and Jewish intellectuals torn apart by political violence. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, An Impossible Friendship strikes a delicate balance between empathy and distance, offering a poignant narrative that evokes both sadness for what Palestine could have been and hope for a different future.

Eugene Rogan, author of The Arabs: A History:
Through painstaking research and compelling narrative, Mejcher-Atassi has pieced together both a group biography of five of the most fascinating lives, Arab and Jewish, and an unforgettable portrait of a lost Jerusalem. An outstanding accomplishment and a remarkable book.