“There’s a remarkable coiled power to this slim novel—it moves in unexpected directions, its characters’ lives tossed about by the collision of history and personality.” - Kamila Shamsie
“No One Knows Their Blood Type offers a gripping, textured vision of what it can feel like to be human amidst colonial dehumanization. In this novel, the deep disruptions of war and oppression sharpen universal family complexities and prod the young Palestinian women at the novel’s center to examine their own places in the world. I loved this tender, troubling book.” - Katharine Beutner
No One Knows Their Blood Type is a novel of identity, belonging, and conflicting truths—of stories, secrets, songs, rumors, and lies. On the day that her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery about her blood type. Hers could not have been inherited from her father—the father she sometimes longed for, but always despised. This extraordinary novel of Palestine centers its narrative not on the battlefield of history, but on how women live every day and the colonial context of their embodied lives. With humor and exhilarating inventiveness, it asks: why aren’t questions of love, friendship, parenthood, and desire at the core of our conversations about liberty and freedom? How would this transform our ideas of resistance?
Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is an Arabic-language Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s book author. She edited The Book of Ramallah, an anthology of short stories published by Comma Press in 2021. Her children’s book A Blue Pond of Questions was translated into English and published by Penny Candy Books. An English translation of her poetry appeared from Milkweed Editions under the title You Can Be the Last Leaf, translated by Fady Joudah and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Hazem Jamjoum is a cultural historian completing his doctorate at New York University, and an audio curator and archivist at the British Library. His previous translations include Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine, published by 1804 Press.
Contents
JUMANA
Jerusalem, 2007
7
JUMANA
Amman, 1986
14
ABU AL-SAEED
Tunis, 1993
31
YARA
Tunis, 1993
50
AMAHL
Beirut, 1979-1982
63
JUMANA
Jerusalem, 2011
88
MALIKA - NINA
Jerusalem, 2012
115
Notes Translator's Afterword
