Amy Abdelnoor: 'Hope comes through seeing each other’s humanity'
BY Maya Fernandes
9th Jul 2026
In this interview Amy Abdelnoor, author of the debut novel Ever Land, shares her approach to balancing the personal and political in her writing.
'I wrote Ever Land because I wanted to be able to take people to Palestine, to a place they were unlikely to be able to visit in person: I wanted to be able to show them the side of the story that was so often repressed, to show them the people I had lived with and met, showing them the reality as it is on the ground.'
We caught up with Amy to discuss her time studying with us, her process for creating authentic relationships on the page and advice for approaching literary agents.
Ever Land alternates between the perspectives of Dinah, a Jewish teenager newly arrived in Israel, and Safa, a Palestinian girl trapped in the 'In-Between'. How did you approach writing these two distinct voices, and what challenges came with balancing their stories?
Years ago, when I lived in Ramallah, and before the days of blogs and social media, I used to write emails home about what I was seeing and experiencing. One friend replied to an email I wrote saying, ‘there are two sides to every story, Amy, and it feels like you are very involved in one of them.’
I replied that there are two sides – and they are wholly unequal. If I could just bring you here and show you, for a week, for a day – for an hour – you would understand.
It was when I finally committed to writing a novel, in 2019, (there’s a whole other story in why it took me so long!), I was thinking about the trip I made to find the destroyed village of a dear friend of mine, whom I’d lived with in a refugee camp in Lebanon. I found the remains of her village because of the cactus plants growing there – cactus plants used to be used by Palestinians as the natural borders for their land. Even decades after the villagers had been forcibly evicted and the homes razed to the ground, the cactus plant still grows. In Arabic, the name for the cactus plant – Sabir – is synonymous with the adjective patience.
So I realised that the cactus plant was my way in – that the land speaks and holds memories, it became the way for my Palestinian voice, Safa – who is dead, and that’s not a spoiler, the reader knows that from the start – to communicate with the teenager who moves to live in a settlement in the West Bank.
I wrote Ever Land because I wanted to be able to take people to Palestine, to a place they were unlikely to be able to visit in person: I wanted to be able to show them the side of the story that was so often repressed, to show them the people I had lived with and met, showing them the reality as it is on the ground.
People think that the situation is about one side and another side, but the reality on the ground is that settler occupation exists on top of the indigenous population and this is what I tried to convey in the novel.
Palestine is now defined by the occupation, and to explain Palestine and what it is, one has to engage with how the status quo came about: Dinah comes from North London – Dinah could be the girl next door, the neighbour over the street, she could be the reader. Dinah’s journey is one of political awakening and enlightenment. It’s a coming of age and knowledge – and uncannily, actually, her story is fairly prescient of the political awakening we have seen in so many people over the last few years.
The bond Safa forms with Dinah is affectionate. That was always important to me – because ultimately, hope comes through seeing each other’s humanity.
The novel moves across different time periods while exploring the lasting impact of historical events. How did you weave together the personal and political aspects of the story without losing sight of the characters at its heart?
I love this question. I knew that I wanted to write a story, I never considered writing non-fiction, and my brilliant agent, Sophie, was great during the editing process, at identifying anything that was sounding at all like it was veering into non-fiction. The weaving together started with the image and metaphor of the Sabir cactus plant.
Although ultimately not everything that links the stories together ends up happening in sight of the plant (that was an early thought), it is the premise for the interweaving. Safa first starts to appear to Dinah when she sees destroyed remains of these plants and I had all these beats, or pulse points, transition moments, where something in Dinah’s life had a parallel – a negative parallel, sadly, in Safa and her sister’s world. So for example – water, electricity, movement, keys. All these things for Palestinians, and for those of us who are deeply involved in the movement for Palestinian freedom, are deeply resonant, and often triggering. We understand how they are controlled by Israel and used as an integral part of the state maintaining its occupation. So, I had ideas of all the ways in which the two lives could interlink through these transitions and it really went from there. For Palestinians, identity is almost inevitably political. These are a people whom, for over 70 years, have been defined by what is denied them – the right to live with freedom and equality on their homeland. And that is conflated with every part of daily life, shaping, affecting, complicating and – all too often hurting or destroying, the way in which Palestinians have to deal with all the universal aspects of human experience – raising children, getting ill, feeling upset, worrying about how they will pay bills, feeding the family and so on.
The relationship between Dinah and Safa forms the emotional core of the novel. What advice would you give writers trying to create authentic relationships on the page, particularly between characters whose experiences are so different?
I think that author cliché of ‘knowing your characters, feeling them as if they are real’ and having conversations with them is part of the development of authentic, rounded characters. The opening of the novel came to me in a frenzy – a few lines in a non-fiction book I was reading allowed me to think about how to tell the story and the challenge of writing the first five pages for a competition by that name spurred me to get it going.
I had this vision of a girl from England creeping round the outside of a brand-new house on an Israeli settlement, being watched by a spirit-girl who desperately needed her help, because of this aching longing inside for her sister. I wrote more than five pages – and then paused as I thought more and more about the characters. I took ages choosing their names. Safa means pure or clear in Arabic and Dinah means judgement and the process of naming them included developing their characters. I’ve pages of notes in which I asked myself questions which helped me to dig into the characters in terms of how they would feel and respond to certain things. Some of it was a process of trial and error – at times I realised Dinah needed vulnerabilities that would create the space for empathy with Safa and her experiences. In an early draft, Dinah’s dad isn’t dead and I realised I needed her to have experienced loss, at a young age, in order to be more empathetic to the terrible, losses of Safa – who, of course, lost her life, but the conceit of the novel is that she is still very much around in her spirit, the essence of her. So, in a sense, her death - while her sister still lives - is her loss.
I remember at one point when I’d written maybe 30 or 40,000 words, thinking – actually, this character doesn’t have to have done what I’ve just made them do – I am in control, I can change that and write it differently, to create a different experience for them and that was very helpful and liberating, as a writer.
It’s interesting that you ask me about characters whose experiences are so different – and of course, their lives are wholly oppositional – all the liberties and freedoms Dinah enjoys and is given, actually, are denied Safa and her people and that of course is what settler occupation does. But they are also both human – and it’s exactly this – the humanisation of Safa and her people, who have been dehumanised by history in the global majority, which was so integral to why I needed to write this book.
What novel do you most frequently find yourself recommending to others?
I absolutely love Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated by Elizabeth Jaquette. Her writing is extraordinary and Minor Detail is a phenomenal novella.
You’re represented by C&W literary agent Sophie Lambert. How did you know that she was the right agent for you? Do you have any tips for new writers approaching agents for the first time?
I was really drawn to Sophie’s list. She represents a massive range of writers – fiction, non-fiction, more mainstream and more literary and so many of her writers engage with really pressing and socially important issues. I signed with Sophie just as Priscilla Morris was shortlisted for a whole range of prize with Black Butterflies, and this really made me think Sophie would be a great fit – that she represented a writer writing about the Bosnian genocide felt like she would respond to my novel. We met at her office and it was clear she’s really experienced, very thorough and knows her stuff; she very much knows the industry and how to navigate selling a literary fiction book in a tough market. Her headline editorial comments aligned with things I had wanted to work on in the book – I think that’s really telling, to get a sense of whether an agent has ideas for your book that you agree with. In terms of approaching for the first time, I know that personalised emails are really important – really conveying to the agent why you do want them to represent you. You’ve got to be succinct, show them why your writing is worth reading. I submitted after I had been shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, which definitely helped me to get noticed. I was trying to think a bit long term, too – what might my next novel be about, and would that appeal, too, to this agent.
You studied with us on our flagship Writing Your Novel – Six Months course in London. How did your time with us shape your approach to writing?
It was really good to commit to my writing through the course. It helped me to hold myself accountable. I was really busy at work and with the children (I have three – they were all under 14 at the time of the course) and the novel was stagnating at about 30,000 words and I wanted to have make myself write that messy first draft. So having the discipline of doing a 2-hour session a week meant that I made myself write in between. Hearing other writers’ feedback was really interesting, to see how things landed. I was writing a bit more experimentally at the time and it was working but it was perhaps limiting, so the process helped me to work through how to tell the story. By the end of the course, I had a full draft – just the last chapter outstanding. That felt really good. I really valued the one-on-one sessions, a time to try to talk a bit more and in detail about particular sessions.
Many of our students find lifelong writing friends on our courses. Are you still in touch with anyone you met on the course?
Yes! I’m still very much in touch with Grace Walker – we have really shared a journey time-scale wise, although her publishing date was brought forward and mine was pushed back, but we signed at about the same time with our agents and with our UK publishers, which was fun. We leave each other very long WhatsApp messages audio messages – writer therapy! Miriam and I have been to lots of events for Palestine together over the last few years and it’s been really lovely to share understanding with her. Fiona and I are still very much in contact – I tend to leave her very, very long messages, which she calls her podcast check ins and she replies with very funny one-liners: it works for us! And of course, everyone who was on the course is invited to my launch party!
And finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
Well, I’ve written a few short stories, and an outpouring of poems. They might be worked on and developed in time. I have lots of ideas for new books and am about 30,000 words through a new one… so I need the headspace now to write regularly so that I can’t get my characters out of my head!
Get your hands on a copy of Ever Land, out now with Hutchinson Heinemann.
Amy was a student on our London Writing Your Novel – Six Months course in 2022.
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