Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist based in Jerusalem. Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was named a best book of 2023 by over ten publications, including The New Yorker,[1]The Economist,[2]Time,[3] the Financial Times,[4]The New Republic,[5]The Millions,[6]Mother Jones,[7]The Forward,[8]Booklist,[9]The New Statesman,[10] and The Irish Times,[11] and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.[12] His first book, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, was published by Metropolitan/Henry Holt in 2017. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine,[13] the London Review of Books,[14] and The New York Review of Books.[15]
Thrall is the former Director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, where he covered Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel's relations with its neighbors from 2010 to 2020.[16] Thrall is a professor at Bard College.[17]
Thrall's book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy was named a best book of 2023 by over ten publications, including The New Yorker,[1]The Economist,[2]Time,[3] the Financial Times,[4]The New Republic,[5]The Millions,[6]Mother Jones,[7]The Forward,[8]Booklist,[9]The New Statesman,[10] and The Irish Times,[11] and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.[12] The Financial Times named it a best book of 2023 in two categories, Literary Nonfiction[4] and Politics,[22] stating, "This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel. At its centre is a tragic road accident outside Jerusalem in the West Bank from which Thrall, a Jewish American journalist, carefully traces the labyrinthine lives of those involved and the tangled web of politics, history and culture that ensnare them all."[4] This book also won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction[23] and was shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.[24]
Thrall's essay collection The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2017; Picador, 2018) received positive reviews in The New York Times,[25]Foreign Affairs,[26]Time,[27] and The New York Review of Books.[28] The Jewish Book Council's Bob Goldfarb wrote that his book, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, "brings unparalleled clarity to the dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian relations, and is an essential guide to the history, personalities, and ideas behind the conflict."[29] Mosaic selected the book as one of the best of the year, writing, "A knowledgeable and bold retelling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that forces readers to take a serious and fresh look at their assumptions. Throughout its counterintuitive retelling of this history, it offers an unusually provocative and sometimes startling contribution to the genre."[30]
In January 2021, the London Review of Books published Thrall's article, "The Separate Regimes Delusion," which argued, "The premise that Israel is a democracy, maintained by Peace Now, Meretz, the editorial board of Haaretz and other critics of occupation, rests on the belief that one can separate the pre-1967 state from the rest of the territory under its control. A conceptual wall must be maintained between two regimes: (good) democratic Israel and its (bad) provisional occupation."[31] Thrall's article was praised in HaaretzbyGideon Levy, who wrote, "the American writer Nathan Thrall, who lives in Jerusalem, published an eye-opening and mind-expanding piece in The London Review of Books .... Thrall doesn't hesitate to criticize the supposedly liberal-Zionist and leftist organizations, from Meretz and Peace Now to Yesh Din and Haaretz. All of them believe that Israel is a democracy and oppose annexation because it could undermine their false belief that the occupation is happening somewhere else, outside of Israel, and is only temporary."[32]
In March 2021, The New York Review of Books published Thrall's piece, "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: One man's quest to find his son lays bare the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule,"[33] together with an animated trailer.[34] The article was covered in The Washington Post,[35]Foreign Policy,[36]The American Prospect,[37]Jewish Currents,[38] European publications,[39][40] the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,[41] a podcast episode hosted by New York Times columnist Peter Beinart,[42] and a two-part, forty-minute segment on Democracy Now![43][44] Longreads called it "an astonishing feat of reporting" and named it a Best Feature of 2021.[45][46][47]
Thrall went on to write a non-fiction book based on the article, completing the work with the help of New York Bard College, which awarded Thrall a writing fellowship. The college invited him to teach a course and Thrall proposed one on Israel and apartheid which he gave for Spring 2023.[48][49]A Day in the Life of Abed Salama-Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy was published on October 3, 2023 by Metropolitan Books.
Thrall, Nathan (2023). A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.[50] New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Company. Hardcover ISBN 9781250854971. ebook ISBN 9781250854988.
"Can Hamas be part of the solution?," in Jamie Stern-Weiner ed., Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel–Palestine's Toughest Questions. New York, New York: OR Books, 2018.[51]
^ abRepublic, The New; Marsh, Laura; Marsh, Laura; Alam, Rumaan; Alam, Rumaan; Nwanevu, Osita; Nwanevu, Osita; Kindley, Evan; Kindley, Evan (2023-12-18). "The New Republic's Books of the Year". The New Republic. ISSN0028-6583. Retrieved 2023-12-24.
