Velvet Box Letters

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A dance with the past unearths secrets that change everything two teenagers thought they knew about their family histories, and their own futures.

Farida and Mazen, two Arab teenagers of Palestinian heritage, meet during a chance encounter at the Louvre in France. Farida is a talented painter who recreates European masterpieces under the patronizing gaze of an art dealer, while Mazen is visiting the art museum to solve the mystery of a family heirloom. As the two come to know each other, they discover a shared history between their grandmothers (sittis). Farida's sitti fled her home during the Nakba in 1948, and put down roots in Syria-now also beset by war. The Nakba made Mazen's sitti a refugee too, but she carried her diary and letters in a velvet-lined box when her family was forced into exile.

Velvet Box Letters moves from Paris to Haifa, from Aleppo to Tangier, conjuring the vibrant cities of the Mediterranean with all the warmth of memory. In this enchanting English debut, Hooda Shawa explores how young Palestinians in the diaspora can redefine their stories while reclaiming the legacy of their forebears.

Reviews

"Provides a space of hope and optimism for the continuity of young generations and their ability to move forward, demolish stereotypes, break down barriers, and find a way in which they have features and an identity that resemble them."

Faten Al-Jamal and Mohamed Al-Zaqzouq, Ultra Sawt

Author Bio

Hooda Shawa was born in the U.K. to a Palestinian father and an English mother. She now lives in Kuwait with her husband and two children, and teaches English as a Second Language at Kuwait University. She has a BA in Economics and an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language. She is currently pursuing a degree in Comparative Literature. Nour Jaljuli is a translator and poet traversing between the worlds of Arabic and English. She holds an MA in literary translation from the University of East Anglia and is the Arabic translator of Rana Dajanis Five Scarves. Her English translations have appeared in ArabLit, Middle East Eye, and the 2022 UEA MALT Anthology for which she was also co-editor. Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognised by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her most recent translations include Black Foam by Haji Jaber (AmazonCrossing) and What Have You Left Behind by Bushra al-Maqtari (Fitzcarraldo Editions). She was selected to be the Princeton Translator in Residence in 2025. She is based in Cambridge, U.K. and her website is sawadhussain.com.