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Sabrin Hasbun presents her debut in Bolzano
Writer Sabrin Hasbun will present her debut novel Tutte le canzoni della pioggia ci riconoscono (Feltrinelli) at the Nuova Libreria Cappelli in Bolzano. The conversation will be led by Lidia Tecchiati. No booking required.
Sabrin Hasbun was born in 1989 near Jerusalem, to a Palestinian father and an Italian mother. She spent her childhood between Palestine and Italy and now lives in the United Kingdom. She studied Literature at the University of Pisa and at the Sorbonne, and completed a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Bath Spa University. She teaches at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where she researches creative processes and collective writing as tools for recovering the histories of marginalised groups and developing decolonisation strategies. The book, which began as a doctoral project, was awarded the Footnote X Counterpoints Writing Prize 2023–24.
The novel opens with Anna and her daughter Sabrin returning, after twelve years, to the house in Ramallah – only to find mould-covered walls and a time that seems to have stood still. Among forgotten books and a red box full of letters, Sabrin searches for traces of her mother, her story, and herself. The narrative reaches back to Tuscany in the 1960s, when a young Anna leaves the Ventoruccia – the family farmstead in the countryside near Grosseto – to study in Florence. There she meets Rami, a Palestinian student at the Academy of Fine Arts. Their love will take Anna far: in 1981 she follows Rami to Bethlehem, a country marked by conflict yet unwilling to give up on beauty and justice. The book follows the family through births and a daily life punctuated by curfews, sunny days on the Sea of Galilee, and fleeting returns to Italy, while the Six-Day War, marches for abortion rights in Italy, and the first intifada unfold in the background. Decades later, it is Sabrin who reassembles the mosaic of those memories, confronting illness, loss, the wall between Israel and Palestine, and the invisible one dividing her identities. A story spanning fifty years and two continents, about the pain of always being "in between" – and the possibility of building, against all odds, a new sense of belonging out of memory, resistance, and love.
Sabrin Hasbun was born in 1989 near Jerusalem, to a Palestinian father and an Italian mother. She spent her childhood between Palestine and Italy and now lives in the United Kingdom. She studied Literature at the University of Pisa and at the Sorbonne, and completed a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Bath Spa University. She teaches at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where she researches creative processes and collective writing as tools for recovering the histories of marginalised groups and developing decolonisation strategies. The book, which began as a doctoral project, was awarded the Footnote X Counterpoints Writing Prize 2023–24.
The novel opens with Anna and her daughter Sabrin returning, after twelve years, to the house in Ramallah – only to find mould-covered walls and a time that seems to have stood still. Among forgotten books and a red box full of letters, Sabrin searches for traces of her mother, her story, and herself. The narrative reaches back to Tuscany in the 1960s, when a young Anna leaves the Ventoruccia – the family farmstead in the countryside near Grosseto – to study in Florence. There she meets Rami, a Palestinian student at the Academy of Fine Arts. Their love will take Anna far: in 1981 she follows Rami to Bethlehem, a country marked by conflict yet unwilling to give up on beauty and justice. The book follows the family through births and a daily life punctuated by curfews, sunny days on the Sea of Galilee, and fleeting returns to Italy, while the Six-Day War, marches for abortion rights in Italy, and the first intifada unfold in the background. Decades later, it is Sabrin who reassembles the mosaic of those memories, confronting illness, loss, the wall between Israel and Palestine, and the invisible one dividing her identities. A story spanning fifty years and two continents, about the pain of always being "in between" – and the possibility of building, against all odds, a new sense of belonging out of memory, resistance, and love.
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