What is the blue between sky and water? Is it a space where there are no borders and where the living and the departed come together without fear?

In The Blue Between Sky and Water, a Palestinian family from the 1940s is forced out of their ancestral village in Palestine when Israel was created. They relocate to the Gaza Strip, like so many other refugees, and later spread out across the region – from Cairo to Kuwait and eventually to the US.

But decades later, one of the granddaughters, Nur, returns to Gaza after falling in love with a Palestinian doctor. Her love affair brings about a clash with her traditional relatives: “This is not America where everyone fucks whoever they want whenever they want because it’s fun. This is Gaza. This is an Islamic place.” Gaza is also “the largest open-air prison in the world” where freedom is desired but never granted and where four generation of women including Nur, who form the heart of the novel, move from suffering to resilience, negotiating their way through different continents.

“Abulhawa’s prose is luminous; her control of a complex weaving of narrative voices – young and old, male and female, magical and real – is masterful,” says Margie Orford in Independent on Sunday. This is her second novel and was sold in 19 languages before its release.

Published in 2015.