Liberty Landing

Liberty landing, a finalist for the 2016 pen-bellwether prize for socially engaged fiction in the us, narrates the American experience of the 21st century through the story of a group of refugees and immigrants in America’s Midwest.

The novel addresses three socio-political issues through characters: the dispossession of the Palestinian people, torture around the globe, and police brutality against black American men. the protagonist of the novel is American real estate tycoon, Gabriel Khoury--a second generation Palestinian refugee, born in UNRWA's refugee camp in Lebanon--whose grandparents were driven out of Galilee in 1948. Gabriel's insatiable appetite for possessions, titles, and deeds and his rejection of his past is framed by the history of Palestine and the Nakba that marks him, shapes his father (a leader in the resistance), and breaks his grandfather. Gabriel is ultimately transformed by Mossad's assassination of his father, Jairus Khoury, and his father's last words to him in a letter: ‘what Palestinians want, what we ever wanted, was your American dream.’