Life, Death, Tragedy in Israel and Palestine: An Evening with Nathan Thrall

For many years, Nathan Thrall's writing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been bracing, enlightening, and urgent—not to mention essential. His reporting and analysis have penetrated deeply into the histories and psyches of both peoples, while not shying away from the complicated reality on the ground, where Thrall has extensive sources and contacts.

The Financial Times called Thrall “one of the best-informed and most trenchant observers of the conflict," while Time declared him “an American analyst with a severe allergy to conventional wisdom.” In 2023, Thrall published A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was immediately the subject of laudatory reviews and made several end-of- year best book lists. (“A powerful evocation of a two-tiered society," The New Yorker wrote: “A vital, important book," declared the Washington Post.)

In conversation with Joshua Yaffa, a writer for The New Yorker, Thrall will share his expertise on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a time of heightened violence and suffering, relaying both the searing personal stories he has collected and also his insight into the larger dynamics at play in the region. The conversation will be frank and provocative, but, like Thrall's writings, rigorously fact-based and rooted in a deep knowledge of history and politics. This is a rare opportunity to see a writer of Thrall's caliber hold forth on some of the most pressing questions of the day in a live setting.

This event will be held off-campus at Jägerstraße 54, 10117 Berlin. Please RSVP through this Google Form.

Nathan Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time, The Economist, The New Republic, and the Financial Times, and selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. His previous book, The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, was published in 2017. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Thrall’s writing has been cited in the United Nations Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council, as well as in reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College.

Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, National Geographic, and other publications. He is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin and was previously a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin.

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Time: 7:00 pm CET/GMT+1

Location: Jägerstraße 54, 10117 Berlin

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