Eden at Dawn

$18.00

by Karim Kattan

Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

In a land forgotten by time, swept by sandstorms, and burdened by occupation, two young Palestinian men fall in love.

Paperback ISBN: 9781632064332
Publication date: September 22, 2026

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In the labyrinthine city of Jerusalem, where poets woo their lovers with tales of jinns, lions, and warriors, Isaac and Gabriel pass in the streets, unaware of one another until biblical Egyptian winds bring enough sand to blot out the heavens. From their first meeting, desire blooms, hesitates, withdraws, and returns in a heady romance recounted by the sky itself, who cranes past rooftops and through windows to glimpse the pair. Defying checkpoints, desert squalls, and blazing heat, Gabriel and Isaac embark on a road trip through Jericho and past the Dead Sea to a storied village in the West Bank—a daring act in a divided country.

Lyrical and languorous, shattering and profound, Eden at Dawn is a feast of love in the midst of war. With this North American debut, lauded author Karim Kattan proves that storytelling is the ultimate act of devotion.

Praise for Eden at Dawn

“Eden at Dawn is a fairytale written in fire, a love story as undying as its witness.”

— Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Map of Salt and Stars and The Thirty Names of Night

“Heavenly. This book is a thing of beauty, of fantasy and magic, of myth and folklore. It births a universe where time passes in godly colors, where ancient cities are swept up in biblical blizzards of snow and sand, where nighttime tales are whispered and weaved into a love between two men—a love that is tender and precious and full of hope. With divine prose, out of the diabolical and bloody violence of our world, Kattan crafts an otherworldly universe, his Eden, the place of our dreams.”
— Tareq Baconi, author of Fire in Every Direction

“An unforgettable love story, sensuous and otherworldly. Tracing a queer love between two men in Palestine, Kattan’s prose pulses with poetry and strangeness, exploring new dimensions to love and longing. Politically astute and mythic in scope, Kattan’s language transforms the landscape of desire into something luminous and enduring.”

— Saleem Haddad, author of Floodlines and Guapa

“Karim Kattan intertwines a grand love story with the memory of places, transfiguring the topography of Palestine into a visionary landscape where eroticism and poetry become acts of resistance. A magical, sensual novel that elevates love into an act of resistance, to survive in a wounded world still looking for its dawn.”

— Judges, 2026 Premio Gregor von Rezzori

“A rare gem of a story—bittersweet, luminous, and intimate enough to feel like someone is whispering secrets in your ear.”

— Angelo Tijssens, author of The Edges

“Karim Kattan’s prose is brimming with such life that you forget you’re reading words and not colors, melodies, spices, textures. This book celebrates the poetry that is the human experience in its entirety. It makes you pause and pay attention to the details as the narrative unfolds with the force of a quiet avalanche. I adored it.”

— Lana Bastašić, author of Catch the Rabbit

“One of the most beautiful books of this literary season.”

— Augustin Trapenard, La Grande Librairie

“Kattan’s prose unfurls poetically as a prayer to the heart of Palestine—love told as an act of defiance and spellbound by the sands of the Khamaseen. This is Kattan’s haunting rebellion; an incantation against our cruel and violent humanity.”

— Mohammed Massoud Morsi, author of The Hair of the Pigeon

“Karim Kattan’s Eden at Dawn is a queer Palestinian love story that is breathtaking and refreshingly original, blending vivid poetics and gorgeous prose. It is the story of our times, wonderfully translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman. This is such an essential read.”

— Hasan Namir, author of God in Pink

“Karim Kattan is making his mark on the literary world with novels of magnetic prose that transport you to a world both sensual and political, of breathtaking beauty.”

— Alexandra Schwartzbrod, Libération

“A very beautiful, very sensitive book.”

— Nicolas Herbeaux, France Culture

“Magnificent.”
— Doan Bui, Le Nouvel Obs

“Everything in Karim Kattan's language tends toward an extreme, deliberate lyricism, caressed to the very limits of what a writer can do.”

— Cécile Dutheil de la Rochère, En Attendant Nadeau

“Karim Kattan accomplishes, with this magnificent second novel, the most powerful act of which literature is capable: affirming the full and complete humanity of those to whom the world only grants a partial and conditional humanity.”

— Joy Majdalani, L'Orient-Le Jour

“Eden at Dawn, the first major queer work set in occupied territory, is a powerful rebuttal to prejudices about Palestine.”

— Jean Stern, Orient XXI

“An extraordinary novel.”

— Fabio Gambaro, La Repubblica

“Karim Kattan's magnificent novel is both exquisitely tender and tragically brutal.”

— Stefano Montefiori, Corriere della Sera

“Everything is true, even what is false. The novel, poetry, literature: that's what we're talking about here, and all at the same time.”

— Baptiste Thery-Guilbert, Diacritik

“A highly poetic, raw novel, full of the vitality of irony and orality, which makes tangible the glaring opposition between love and desire on the one hand, and violence and hatred on the other.”

— Kenza Sefrioui, Enass

“A sensual, lyrical, and unadorned language.”

— Faris Mounis, ActuaLitté

“A captivating and magical text of furious beauty. A cry of freedom and love.”

— Théophile Lacroix, Payot, Geneva

“A text swept by the winds of dazzling beauty.”

— Mathieu, Decitre, Grenoble

“A real slap in the face.”

— The tiny bookstore, Paris 20th

“A moving story about two very different people, who clumsily but lovingly seek how to be in the world.”

— Les mots à la bouche, Paris 11th

“What style, what beauty, what poetry… Eden at Dawn is a unique novel, which subtly blends beauty and tragedy, love and violence.”

— Pascal, Grenouille bookstore, Langeac

“This striking, striking, and moving read offers, through fiction, a salutary illumination of Palestinian lives.”

— Elsa, La voie aux chapitres, Lyon

“The preciousness and poetic love that define his writing make Karim Kattan one of the most unique contemporary voices. Humanity is praised with finesse in each page of this novel. Fabulous!”

— Little Egypt

“It’s Beautiful, it’s tender, this novel knows violence and knows how to make it sublime.”

— Mallory, Arthaud bookstore, Grenoble

“Karim Kattan’s enchanting writing adopts an Arabian mythology to give us a poetic, phantasmagorical book, filled with the scent of spices, warm colors, and all-consuming passions, but also made up of a latent violence in every path, every road, every village.”

— Didier, Librairie des Pertuis, Saint Pierre d’Oléron

“A thousand-year-old tale, sensual, brilliant, heartbreaking.”

— The Regular

“Magical!! A little gem of literature.”

— Lucie, Les Nouveautés, Paris 10th

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karim Kattan is a Palestinian writer from Bethlehem, born in Jerusalem, based in France. He writes fiction, essays, and poetry. His English-language writing has appeared in various journals, including The Paris Review, The Dial, The European Review of Books, The Baffler, and others. His first novel, Le Palais des deux collines (The Palace on the Higher Hill), won the 2021 Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie. Eden at Dawn (first published as L'Éden à l’aube) has received several awards in France and was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Renaudot 2024, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori 2026, and the 2024 Prix de la littérature arabe. His third novel, Septentrionale (North star), will be published in France in September 2026.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator of French literature. A graduate of Yale University, he has won the French Voices Grand Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, received fellowships from MacDowell and the National Endowment for the Arts, and been named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.