As part of the activities organized by Casa Árabe in Madrid to commemorate the Nakba, the book “The Black Book: From Gaza,” coordinated by Gonzalo Delgado and published by Ediciones del Oriente y del Mediterráneo, will be presented on Wednesday, May 13. The event will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the Ambassadors’ Hall of Casa Árabe (Calle Alcalá, 62, first floor). Admission is free until capacity is reached. The presentation will be in Spanish.
“The Black Book of Gaza: Testimonies of a Genocide,” a volume coordinated by Gonzalo Delgado, brings together the stories and testimonies of young Gazans subjected to violence, siege, and destruction. A moving anthology of stories and testimonies about survival and resistance, thus underscoring its dimension and value as an archive of memory against oblivion.
The book is built upon an idea of Gonzalo Delgado himself that lends historical depth to the whole: “Palestine is the synthesis of all its destinies.” From there, the editor places these young voices within a broader Palestinian literary tradition, noting that authors like Kanafani, Darwish, and Habibi live on in the words of young Gazans like Ghaydaa Al-Abadsa and Ibrahim Yaghi, whose accounts of the tragedy “carve the history of a people who always understand themselves in their entirety.”
Mikel Ayestaran, writing in El Correo, situates the work amidst the present of the war and begins with an image very powerful: “Bombs are falling on Gaza. The air is thick with dust, screams, and silence.” From this perspective, the work makes audible the daily life under siege and restores face, voice, and concrete experience to those reduced to mere statistics.
The book includes an epilogue by Israeli journalist Amira Hass, in which she denounces the dehumanization of Gazans and highlights the value of the stories in this book because they are written “from and about hell.”
The book launch will feature Gonzalo Delgado. Presented by Karim Hauser, Cultural Coordinator of Casa Árabe.
Gonzalo Delgado Meana (Madrid, 1990) is a writer and journalist with a degree in Information Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid. His passion for Arab literature and culture, as well as for the history and current events of the Middle East, took root in his early youth. He currently works as a communications consultant, a profession he combines with an independent project exploring countless journeys to the region: Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, etc. Through a literary project emanating from the Gazan protagonists, it aims to convey to the Spanish reader the direct testimony of a reality of our times that is essential to know.
