Content warning: this episode includes discussion of war, killing and the ongoing violence in Gaza.
Why did a cactus in an empty Palestinian village become the start of a novel?
What happens when the ghost of a girl killed in 1967 asks a teenager from North London for help?
And, why did Amy's tutor tell her, aged 20, to choose another cause?
Peter and Afua talk to novelist Amy Abdelnoor about her debut, Ever Land.
Amy volunteered in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and lived in Ramallah during the Second Intifada. Ever Land follows two girls. Safa is a Palestinian girl killed in the 1967 Six-Day War, who can't move on until she finds her little sister. Dinah is a Jewish teenager from London who moves to Israel decades later. Amy talks about the cactus plants that still mark emptied villages, why she chose fiction over non-fiction, the email that told her there are "two sides to every story", writing grief, and her Lebanese grandfather.
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00:00 Introduction
03:07 What Ever Land is about
03:56 Why a ghost? The cactus in the empty village
08:25 Why fiction, not history
11:16 "Two sides to every story"
15:30 Writing as the world changed
20:46 Writing grief
24:05 Ghosts in the landscape
27:31 Is Safa every ghost?
30:30 Amy's Lebanese roots
33:40 "Choose another cause"
Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.
legacy.supportingcast.fm
Stay connected with Legacy:
Instagram: @originallegacypodcast
TikTok: @legacy_productions
Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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