The Parachute Paradox: Decolon

Winner of the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award and the 2016 Nautilus Book Award for Best Memoir.

On a flight out of Tel Aviv, still shaken by another airport interrogation, Steve Sabella remembers a tandem parachute jump over Haifa—the rush of free fall, and the instant the chute opened and he understood that he had never been falling alone. Someone strapped behind him held every cord: when the parachute opened, the direction of the descent, where they landed, and whether he reached the ground safely at all.

That is the paradox at the heart of this memoir. Born in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sabella grew up a foreigner in his own home—a Palestinian under occupation, bound to a reality he never chose. Later in the book, he gives the parachute image its political meaning: there is an Israeli on the back of every Palestinian—not merely present, but controlling every aspect of life.

The Parachute Paradox is the story of how one artist set out to reclaim the cords of his own life by attempting something no one had told him was possible: to liberate not the land first, but the imagination.

Structured as a reverse countdown—from Chapter 15 to zero—the memoir unfolds with the tension of a thriller. Each chapter draws Sabella closer to the decisive question: can he reclaim control of his own descent before occupation determines not only where he lands, but who he is allowed to become?

From the alleys of Jerusalem through both intifadas, a kidnapping in Gaza, exile in London and Berlin, and a life remade through photography and art, this is a memoir of identity, love, loss, and a freedom no checkpoint can contain.


First published as a limited artist edition by Kerber Verlag, The Parachute Paradox is a firsthand account for anyone drawn to the story of Palestine and Israel, to the inner life of an artist, or to the quiet and radical idea that the way out begins in the imagination.

Steve Sabella is a Jerusalem-born artist and author based in Berlin. For nearly three decades, his work has explored exile, identity, image-making, and the liberation of the imagination—turning exile into image, and the image into a site of liberation.

Working across photography, photographic collage, installation, and writing, Sabella's work is held in collections including the British Museum, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. He holds an MA in Art Business from Sotheby's Institute of Art and an MA in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster, where he studied as a Chevening Scholar.

In 2008, Sabella received the Ellen Auerbach Award from the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. His monograph, Steve Sabella: Photography 1997-2014, was later published by Hatje Cantz. His memoir The Parachute Paradox received the 2017 Eric Hoffer Award and a Gold Nautilus Book Award. He is also the author of The Artist's Curse | The Artist's Cure, winner of the 2024 Silver Nautilus Book Award in Creativity & Innovation.

Across art and writing, Sabella works to dismantle inherited narratives and reclaim the image as a territory of imaginative and intellectual freedom.