In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees

Jeff Talarigo offers a rare glimpse and alternative point of view into a place few people have dared to visit: the Gaza Strip. These linked stories expose the seven-decade-long Palestinian diaspora in a disquieting allegory of the clash between the occupied and the occupier. In 1993, Talarigo watched two Palestinian boys playing with an injured bird with a string around its neck. The boys tossed the bird into the air, waiting for it to fly before the string ran out, and the bird fell into the boys' hands. For nearly a year, the author carried this image with him before he wrote a story about the bird. This story became his first published piece of fiction about his Gaza journey.