Samīra ʿAzzām

Samira Azzam was a Palestinian writer, broadcaster, and translator known for her collections of short stories. In 1948, Azzam fled Palestine with her husband and family in the midst of the 1948 Palestine War. Her collections of stories are renowned for examining the entirety of the Palestinian identity during this time period. Her first set of short stories, Small Things, was published in 1954, and examined women's role in Palestinian society. After returning to Beirut in 1959, she examined other Palestinian social structures such as the class hierarchy. She published two more collections of short stories during her life, The Big Shadow and The Clock and the Man. Throughout her writing, she does not cast blame as to the cause of these social structures, but rather creates plot lines that characterize these different sub-cultures within Palestinian society, relating them to political situation of this historical period. Therefore, her writing creates a very holistic view of Palestinian national identity during this time in history.