"I have been floored by Zeeva Bukai's novel "The Anatomy of Exile," a story of a Palestinian and an Israeli family after 1967. It left me awash in thoughts about the power of love and the essence of home. Certainly the book gives insight into on-the-ground experience in a region it is too easy to pontificate about from afar. But I would have loved “The Anatomy of Exile” if it were set in Fiji or on the moon. Awe and joy for this marvelous novel."-John McWhorter, The New York Times
"A sprawling epic about diaspora, war, immigration and the lasting scars of intergenerational trauma; one that lands with particular power and poignance amid the latest Israel-Hamas war."—
The Forward"Shying away from villains and heroes, the novel creates sympathy for a spectrum of individuals trapped by tribalism, land grabs, heartless government actions, and economics. A book to read right now."—Kirkus Reviews
"The storytelling is rich with details and the author skillfully brings the characters to life with sentimentally charged dialogues. . . . Readers will be captivated by this intimate journey of an Israeli family into their self-imposed exile."—The Times of Israel
"In her tremendous, transporting debut, The Anatomy of Exile, Zeeva Bukai demonstrates the unique power of literature to transcend borders, excavate our shared humanity, and perhaps even heal. . . .This is a vital exploration of what it means to be in exile, and how the loss of an anchor necessitates a reckoning with the self — a self without borders, without country, without land. Bukai writes with lyrical urgency and compassionate insight about identity, belonging, dispossession, and desire, capturing the doomed irony of homeland and the lengths to which people will go to insulate themselves in a false notion of safety." —Sara Lippman, Jewish Book Council
"All the more impressive when considering that The Anatomy of Exile is author Zeeva Bukai's debut as a novelist, this is an original, fascinating, deftly crafted novel."—Midwest Book Review
"Bukai is so invested in imagining the impact of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict within the domestic confines of a romantic relationship . . . in her beautifully written, riveting debut novel."—The Jewish Journal
“A tight plot woven with complicated moral questions faced by characters willing to confront their circumstances creates a novel that’s impossible to put down.”—The New York Journal of Books
"Its characterizations nuanced and complicated, the novel reflects deep cultural mores and customs from both Palestinian and Israeli cultures. . . .How history is dealt with in the present matters in The Anatomy of Exile, a novel that lays bare human complexities with tentative, wistful hope.”—Foreword Reviews
"Zeeva Bukai writes as perceptively about romantic love and family life as she does about the wider forces that haunt it: war and exile, love across borders, the long, torturous shadow of the past. The Anatomy of Exile is a compassionate, searing and full-of-life that bears witness in important ways."—Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantike, winner of the National Jewish Book Award
“In The Anatomy of Exile Zeeva Bukai beautifully weaves one Mizrahi family’s tragic tale of love and loss and deftly illuminates the liminal space between places and languages, Arabness and Jewishness. With great empathy
