Before We Say Goodbye

By Gabriella Ambrosio

“This is no life. Sooner or later it must finish.”

It is seven a.m. on a spring morning in Jerusalem. Eighteen-year-old Dima trudges through the mud to college and reflects on many things, including her forthcoming marriage to her cousin Faris. Seventeen-year-old Myriam skips school to sit on the tree-lined hill overlooking the city and think about her friend Michael, whose death she still mourns. And Dima’s and Myriam’s families – one Palestinian, one Israeli – go about their ordinary, separate lives; for today is like every other day. Yet in seven hours’ time, everything will have changed. For ever.

Categories: Fiction

For readers aged: 14+

Publication details:
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781406325041
Published: 02 Aug 2010
Price: £5.99

Size: 198 x 129 mm
Pages: 160

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Customer reviews

Reviews

'Juxtaposes cultural tradition and extremism with explosiveconsequences … with an electrifying sense of pace and short, spare narrative that progresses the story at a real lick, this is a book that is guaranteed to make an impression as well as holding real appeal for less confident readers.' The Bookseller

'This is an imaginatively constructed work. Ambrosio’s strength is the atmosphere she creates and maintains.' The Herald (Glasgow)

'Ambrosio’s novella eloquently evokes the human consequences of this long-running conflict.' The Herald

'Before we say goodbye puts real-life breath into endless news stories, and bomb sites, and religious speculation,and horror, death and namelessness. It is a story about teenagers as people.' Church Times

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