Atef Abu Saif is a Palestinian writer. He was born in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1973, to a family originally from Jaffa. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Birzeit University, a master’s degree from the University of Bradford (UK), and a P.h.D. in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Florence, Italy. He teaches Political Science at the University of Al-Azhar, Gaza, and is Chief Editor of Siyasat magazine, published by the Public Policy Institute in Ramallah. He is the author of five novels. His latest, A Suspended Life (2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 International Prize for Arab Fiction, also known as the “Arabic Man Booker.” He has also published two collections of short stories, three plays as well as several books on politics. He is a regular contributor to a number of Palestinian and Arabic newspapers and journals, and writes a weekly column for the Palestinian Al-Ayam newspaper. In 2014 Atef edited The Book of Gaza, which featured ten short stories by ten contemporary authors from the Strip. His account of the 2014 Gaza conflict was published in English under the title The Drone Eats with Me: Diaries from a City under Fire, with a foreword by Noam Chomsky. Extracts from the diaries have appeared not only in The Short Story Project but also in magazines such as Slate and Guernica, and also in The Guardian and the New York Times. The Dairies were also translated into German in 2016.
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The Drone Eats with Me – Diaries from a City Under Fire