The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem
In her first novel, now available in English after her International Booker Prize nomination, a young Palestinian man undergoes a dreamlike experience of interrogation
With a translation from the Arabic by Iraqi poet and novelist Sinan Antoon, The Sleep Thief is the debut novel by Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem, who was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025 for The Book of Disappearance. The titular ‘Sleep Thief’ is Gharib Haifawi, a young man under interrogation. The name is bestowed by his captor as he manages to steal only snatches of sleep before the process resumes. What follows is a dream-like, often nightmarish, but surprisingly sensual account of Gharib’s life, his words collected and inferred by a nameless narrator.
Eyes, which some refer to as the windows to the soul, are central to this story. Under interrogation Gharib’s eyes are badly swollen from constant crying and lack of sleep. They are later described in happier times as 'honey-coloured, neither big nor small.' Gharib admits to a profound fear of going blind, and he judges the worth of others by looking deeply into their own eyes. They are an indicator as to how alive an individual is, or how dead. The Sleep Thief is full of both.
This is an insightful portrait of a young man, with everything that implies, and by viewing his formative experiences of love, lust, drunkenness, and death, set against a backdrop of conflict and violence, the effects are profound, powerfully empathetic, and incredibly moving from first page to last.
