Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life: Voices of Survival and Witness in Gaza

Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature

An acclaimed Syrian journalist crafts a vital portrait of October 7, 2023, and its aftermath through the harrowing yet life-affirming accounts of 26 Palestinians.

Throughout 2024, Samar Yazbek met with hundreds of survivors from Gaza, asking each of them about their experience of October 7, 2023, and what their life has been like since that pivotal date. In Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life—a title adapted from one of the flyers dropped on the residents of Gaza minutes before a bombing—Yazbek captures the raw, chilling accounts of ordinary civilians aged 13 to 65, who have witnessed what history may remember as one of the most savage military offensives of our time.

Their stories reveal a nightmarish dystopia, where each survivor has endured unimaginable loss—homes shattered, loved ones vanished, limbs obliterated—and many have been treated in hospitals ravaged by Israeli attacks. But these survivors remain determined to share their experiences, and cling to the hope that their voices will resonate.

More than a record of horrors for posterity, this breathtaking collection testifies to the power of education and writing, which remind us of our common humanity.