In April, New York-based Other Press published Tale of a Wall, a memoir by Nasser Abu Srour, translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren. Abu Srour is a Palestinian prisoner serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison. He was arrested in 1993, accused of being an accomplice to the murder of an Israeli intelligence officer, and sentenced to life in prison.

Before October 7, 2023, Abu Srour was one of more than 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Since October 7^th, the prisoner support and human rights organization Addameer estimates that more than 7,000 West Bank Palestinians have been arrested. In April Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, said that the death penalty for prisoners was “the right solution to the incarceration problem.” 

While incarcerated Abu Srour finished his bachelor’s degree from Bethlehem University and obtained a master’s degree in political science from Al-Quds University. His autobiography of thirty years in captivity is historical, philosophical, metaphysical, as well as being a love story. Throughout this time, he finds solace and companionship in the wall that surrounds him. It took Abu Srour several years to smuggle his manuscript out of prison. It was first published in 2022 by Dar Al Adab, Beirut. So far, Tale of a Wall is forthcoming in four languages. Leafgren says he hopes that one day Abu Srour will be able to tell the full story about how he wrote his book, and how the manuscript reached the Lebanese publisher, Dar Al Adab.

Luke Leafgren is an assistant dean of Harvard College, where he also teaches courses on translation. He has published seven translations of Arabic-language novels and received the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation twice—once in 2018 for his translation of Muhsin Al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens and again in 2023 for his translation of Najwa Barakat’s Mister N. He answered the following questions for Words Without Borders. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you come to translate Nasser Abu Srour’s Tale of a Wall?

Sometime during the summer of 2022, I was recommended by another translator who was too busy for the job. I sent [the publisher] Other Press a short sample of a few thousand words; I had really enjoyed what I read. I was really intrigued by the story—it seemed very important that it be told, and Nasser’s situation was one I wanted to learn more about so that I could help him tell his story to an English-language audience. The way that he tells this story combines so many different aspects of storytelling: there’s his biography but then he interweaves with it the Palestinian struggle since the time of the Nakba, philosophical reflections, psychological explorations, and poems that he writes. And then, in the second half there’s an entire shift to almost a different form, at the moment he falls in love. You get a love story and through it all, there is this concept of the wall as a witness. The wall is the constant that helps him preserve his sanity when everything else is uncertainty and chaos. I spoke with [Other Press founder] Judith [Gurewich]. And then I dove in. I drafted the book from September to January 2023 and then worked on edits. The second draft was finished in March 2023. Then another round of edits in August. The project was more difficult than I had anticipated [due to the complexity of the Arabic language and the way in which it was written].

You’ve translated novels by Iraqi and Lebanese authors—is this the first Palestinian book you have translated? Have you been to Palestine?

Yes, it’s the first full project [from Palestine] I’ve worked on. I’m interested in the Palestinian author, Eyad Barghuthy, and had done a sample of his work and pitched it. So I’ve had some experience with Palestinian dialect. When I was studying Arabic I spent summers in Jordan, Egypt, and Syria but I’ve never been to Palestine. It would have been helpful to have gone.

But as someone who’s been interested in Arabic and the Middle East for over twenty years you are inevitably paying attention to news and commentary about the region and forming an idea about what the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians means.

And it’s something that has come up in most of the books I’ve translated. In books by Iraqis like Muhsan al Ramli and Inaam Kachachi, they write about it, and then Bushra Khalfan from Oman, when she’s writing about the development of Oman as a state in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s and how impactful things in Palestine were on their consciousness of the broader world. 

Were you able to ask the author questions?

My questions were limited. I feel very fortunate that Judith and I had contact with Nasser’s niece and his lawyer and with some acquaintances and friends and a brother of his who lives in the US. I was selective with questions, and I prioritized the ones that were most important. His niece could answer and provide context. Some questions were passed on to Nasser. He relayed replies back. It wasn’t as easy as it would have been convenient, there were more questions that I would have been happy to ask. One thing that was very reassuring was that we were able to get a copy of my English translation to him, and for him to send back comments, which was interesting and helpful. There is a huge responsibility when translating any book, to be speaking for an author, and I felt the weight of the responsibility even more so when the author was so limited in his ability to speak for himself. Having the input of other people who know him and having him see the translation and provide validation that I was able to capture his voice and what he was trying to communicate was very important to me.

Can you describe the editing process? I imagine some publishers might be using the English version as a bridge language to translate from, especially from smaller languages that might have a lack of translators.

During the editing process, we compressed the text somewhat. The first draft from last January was 96,000 words, and final draft was 78,500 words. I had a conversation with Judith about how to effectively convey the story—our sense was that the amount of elaboration and repetition of ideas didn’t serve it as well as a somewhat more streamlined version. (This determination was made based on the sense that there hadn’t been much editing of the original manuscript.)

I have so much respect for any author and their creation that I was reluctant to do this, but ultimately I thought it would help Nasser communicate his ideas and tell his story.

I hope that translators into other languages will use the Arabic text, even if they also consult my English translation. I think we did an effective job and it’s one that Nasser read and approved. I am also conscious that every translation is an interpretation. It’s a very complex text and I’d be happy to see how other translators in other languages understand some of the phrasing and some of the ideas that Nasser is presenting.

Had you read any prison memoirs before this, or did you, before you began the translation?

I didn’t. I wish that I had. I was coming at this just trying to hear Nasser’s voice in English.

Drawing of Palestinian writer Nasser Abu Srour on the wall of a building in the Aida refugee camp near Nasser’s family home in the West Bank. Photo credit: Vladimir Gurewich.

What was his voice, how do you imagine him?

A deep thinker. Far-ranging in his ideas. Very well-read. He cites work from many different genres and cultures and sources. His writing style is not particularly conversational in tone, it’s intricate and very complex in style in the way he layers ideas on top of one other. That, in addition to the text not having paragraph breaks or consistent punctuation, meant that sometimes I was working hard to decipher the meaning of the text.

I inserted many paragraph breaks and punctuated the text in a way that I think is consistent and helpful. At the same time I hope the complexity of the thinking is preserved despite trying to make it easier for the reader. I would love to hear from reviewers, commentators, and readers of the text in Arabic.

You’ve treated violence before in Iraqi and Lebanese novels, for example in Muhsin Al-Ramli’s work or Najwa Barakat’s Ya Salaam, which is incredibly violent. How did the violence differ in Tale of a Wall?

One of my Arabic professors knew Najwa Barakat and suggested that I could translate Ya Salaam as my second [translation] project. I read it and I thought, no way, I don’t want to spend any more time with these characters who are so awful. In the end I did do it, thinking about the value of her exploration of violence. The violence that Barakat’s writing is describing with these former Lebanese militia fighters, or the violence in some of Muhsin al Ramli’s writing describing torture under the Saddam Hussein regime, is sadistic violence, whereas this book is different. The violence here is a systematic variety of violence. On the one hand there’s the violence that happens to a person who is arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned, and on the other hand there’s the violence of an occupying state that is controlling a population and putting down an uprising. It’s a different kind of violence.

Although Abu Srour was tortured?

I hope he will talk more about it someday. Some of the interrogation and torture he experienced comes through; he was beaten during an interrogation, put in solitary confinement, and hung by chains from the wall, but he doesn’t elaborate much. So much more is about the situation of the Palestinian people and what happens in prison; about people held in difficult conditions who hold hunger strikes to win concessions from the prison authorities. The scene of soldiers taking away a child who was born in prison was heartbreaking to read and to think about. How women who are pregnant are imprisoned and give birth. There’s a powerful description of what it means for those prisoners to raise a child for the first year of its life and then for it to be taken away at the end of the year.

What about the psychological aspect of translation: how did you feel while translating it—did you ever start feeling claustrophobic, and did you have to take breaks?

It’s interesting, translation by its nature forces you to take breaks. There’s only so much time of focused attention I can spend translating continuously. So by doing it in sections, that provides separation from the emotional impact. The work of interpreting can be very intellectual and that provides some insulation. While translating, the most common emotion I felt was of frustration, struggling with the text, trying to interpret it, and facing self-doubt. It was only during the editing process, when I had a solid draft, that I was able to feel the emotional impact of the story and see and be moved by the pain of his description of the family visits or being separated from the woman he falls in love with, or the anguish of not being present when loved ones pass away.

The love story that is described in the book and his relationship with freedom is so powerful . . .

The way that he is able to feel freedom while imprisoned and paradoxically how he starts to lose that freedom when he falls in love because of his desire not to feel entangled, and to exist on a more spiritual plane—that involves a huge sacrifice on his part.

Given the current context with the genocidal war on Gaza, and also being on a campus in the US where political discourse has been so impassioned—has this changed your outlook on the memoir, and if so, how?

One reason I was excited about this project was to promote a greater understanding of the Palestinian situation since 1948, in the hopes that a just peace might one day be achieved. After the appalling attacks on October 7 and the incomprehensible horror of Israeli’s retaliation in Gaza, it’s hard to imagine anything that might make a difference. But we must not turn away in despair, and translating this book is the small part I can play.

How will the promotional process work—some translators get quite involved in it—how do you see your role?

When I was talking initially with Judith, she was looking for someone who could be a partner in bringing attention to Nasser’s book and his imprisonment. And that’s something I’m eager to do. Translation is about helping authors reach an audience so their art and ideas can make a difference in the world. In this case, since Nasser cannot participate in interviews, I’ll take every chance I get to bring attention to his book and the story he tells. I deeply hope that Nasser will one day be able to take part in such conversations himself.