Red Flour

A Palestinian novel about witnessing a massacre, and worse still, surviving it.

Resurrected in Heaven, a bewildered survivor of a massacre flashes back to harrowing events unfolding in an unnamed besieged town, a camp ravished by hunger and swollen with displaced people and starving children, where a hopeful euphoria building at a breadline culminates in a tragedy and bleak dissolution. Centered on the theme of hunger, the essence of bread, and the magic of flour in a place on the brink of mass starvation, Red Flour is essentially a love story that takes place in a breadline. “But can love blossom in a place ravished by hunger?” 

Languishing under an unending siege and constant bombardment, the camp soon dwindles into a necropolis where bone-thin children wither away in the arms of hapless parents, dying a most agonizing death, before being loaded hurriedly into waiting wagons and buried in haste. And beyond starvation a flour massacre unfolds, leading to the protagonist’s cry: “Even our bread is massacred, murdered before it’s leavened.” 

This is a compelling story of death and survival, of bread and roses, in a world in which humanity is at a brink.

Seraj Assi was born and raised in Palestine. He holds a PhD in Arabic Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to Red Flour, he is the author of My Life As An Alien (Tartarus Press) and Rubble (PM Press). His academic publications include The History and Politics of the Bedouin (Routledge 2018). He writes for numerous outlets, including The Atlantic, Haaretz, Jacobin Magazine, the New Arab, Truthout, among others. He teaches Palestinian Literature at American University in Washington. He lives in Washington DC.