Karim Kattan for The Palace on the Higher Hill

Winner of the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie

Palestinian author Karim Kattan was born in 1989 in Jerusalem and grew up in Bethlehem.

His 2017 short-story collection Préliminaires pour un verger futur was a finalist for the Prix Boccace. The Palace on the Higher Hill, his first novel, won the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, and his most recent novel, L’Eden à l’aube, was shortlisted for the 2024 Prix Renaudot.

Karim joins us for The Palace on the Higher Hill, translated for the first time into English.

In beautiful, angry prose, he introduces us to an intimate Palestine of the imagination where dreams and nightmares are in constant conflict. With hints of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Brideshead Revisited, he gives a nuanced deeply moving vision of the tragedy of war and a picture of his homeland that feels entirely new to English-speaking readers.

Faysal receives a mysterious letter about the death of aunt he can’t remember. Leaving his lover and his life in Europe behind, he returns to the village of his birth in Palestine and to his family’s extraordinary, deserted house, the palace on the higher hill.

With a backdrop of violence and the permanent threat from settlers, Faysal wanders the once-lavish rooms as characters from the past return to shed light on his family story and on the story of his people.