In an essay in The New Yorker, the American writer Andrew Solomon wrote “writing things down makes them real; that it is nearly impossible to hate anyone whose story you know.” This sentiment is the motive behind the erasure of Palestinian narratives throughout the Western cultural sphere. Palestinian authors find themselves disinvited from literary festivals, the word “Palestine” is erased from museum exhibitions, Oscar-winning Palestinian films cannot find distribution in North America.
This cultural erasure, designed to further the imperial policies of our allies like the US, Israel and the UK, by dehumanizing the Palestinian people, makes books like Ashraf Zaghal’s debut novel Seven Heavens Away, feel that much more transgressive and revelatory. The novel is the story of Aziz Omar Aziz, a young Palestinian coming of age in occupied Palestine. Navigating life under an apartheid regime and the resulting social whirlpools and eddies challenges Aziz heart, his faith and his courage.
The novel is set in 2015-2016, a time when Israeli forces began restricting access to Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Aziz, a young man at odds with his father, witnesses, alongside his friend Mustafa, the murder of their friend Hassan at the hands of an Israeli soldier. Through this tragedy, we see how justice is not applied evenly in the Occupied Palestine, and Palestinians have no reason to expect that the law will protect them. After Hassan’s death, Aziz is adrift, joining a group started by Hassan’s father where members devote themselves to their faith and to Palestinian resistance.
The rift between Aziz and his father grows as Aziz becomes more devout and more committed to Palestinian liberation. He forgoes his school curriculum, reading instead the books the group suggests, books about the Mujahideen, for example. He also begins weight training, then is tasked by the group to spy on his neighbours to determine who might be collaborating with the Israeli military, including his free-spirited neighbour, Nuha, a woman whose Bohemian ways attract and repulse him.
Mustafa’s brother, Marwan, gets Aziz a job at a café in Jerusalem that caters to the Jewish residents. There he meets Dafna, an Israeli girl with whom he forms a closeness. She helps him learn Hebrew, he shows her parts of the old city where she usually wouldn’t fit in. Meanwhile, Mustafa is detained and held in Israeli custody, one of the thousands of Palestinians held in “administrative detention” at any given time.
Mustafa is finally released and more committed to the cause than ever. Aziz, however, no longer sees the situation in black and white terms. Abu-Hassan no longer seems so righteous, and his own father no longer seems so irredeemable. His relationship with Dafna grants him a new perspective.
The strength of this novel is its complexity, its Mille-feuille-layers of morality and relationships.
This book could have been boiled down to a mere cliche, a Romeo and Juliette story between Aziz and Dafna. But the strength of this novel is its complexity, its Mille-feuille-layers of morality and relationships. It would be easy to tell this story in the black-and-white terms that initially influence Aziz’s worldview. But the book explores how Aziz lives in a pressure cooker environment, under military rule, with violent settlers forcing more and more Palestinians from their homes. But there’s also people like Abu-Hassan, who use the occupation to empower and enrich themselves, using the language of religion and resistance to recruit others into their service. We also get a sense of how living under oppressive forces made Aziz’s father what he is, and after realizing that, Aziz is able to pardon his shortcomings. Each character in this world has to navigate the various power structures, checkpoints and social stigmas.
Seven Heavens Away shows readers how a person can grow under a violently oppressive regime, either in opposition to it or in spite of it. They can dedicate their lives to fighting back against the forces that seek to steal their land, freedom and humanity, or they can resist by finding another way to live free and not be swallowed by hate. Seven Heavens Away is written in a clear, compelling style that reads very quickly but lingers on the brain for a long time after it’s finished.
For readers in Toronto, the launch party for Seven Heavens Away will be on February 5th 2026 at Society Clubhouse. Details here.
ASHRAF ZAGHAL is a Palestinian Canadian author who was born and raised in Jerusalem. He has published four poetry collections, and his work has been translated into English, French, and Hebrew. He is an editor of an online magazine focused on progressive literature and translation. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.
Publisher: House of Anansi Press (February 3, 2026)
Paperback 5.25″ x 8″ | 328 pages
ISBN: 9781487013486
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
