I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (Hardback or Cased Book)

LONGLISTED FOR THE PALESTINE BOOK AWARD ~ A PALESTINE FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE BOOKSHELF PICK ~ A #1 FAVORITE NONFICTION READ OF 2025 (ENTERPRISE)

“[A] definitive work in the genre of Palestinian memoirs that will not only attract readers of Said or Kanafani, but also fans of Joan Didion, Hisham Matar, Ocean Vuong, or James Baldwin." —The New Arab

“Serhan’s memoir, crafted in magnificent prose . . . is something which is truly cinematic in quality, whose delights and heartbreaks tumble out before the reader as naturally as images fall from a screen . . . utterly vivid and compelling.” —Jhalak Review

A young woman’s search for connection with her estranged father, her family’s past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit

Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been to Palestine, the country from which her family was expelled in 1948. She is twenty-four years old when one morning she receives a phone call from her estranged father. His health is failing and he might not have long to live, so he asks her to join him in China where he runs a business empire about which Mai knows nothing. Mai agrees to go in the hopes that they will become close, but this strange new country is as unknowable to her as her father. There, the ghosts of the Nakba come to haunt them both. With this grief comes violence, and a tragic death brings a whole new meaning to the word erasure.

In a narrative made rich by its layers of fragmentation, as befitting the splintered and disordered existence of exile over generations, this courageous memoir spans Egypt, Lebanon, Dubai, China and, of course, Palestine. It is filled with bitter tragedy and loss and woven through with an understated humor and much grace.

Mai Serhan is a Palestinian writer who grew up in Egypt. She is the author of CAIRO: the undelivered letters, winner of the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award, I Have Never Been to the Place Where I am From, But I Will Imagine It For Us, a finalist for the 2022 Narratively Memoir Prize, and the poetry collection, A Thousand Minarets & No Sidewalks (Diwan Publishing, 2025). She holds an MSt in creative writing from Oxford University, and has studied at NYU and AUC. She lives in Cairo.