Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza, by Hassan Kanafani

Reviewed by Melanie Jackson

Hassan Kanafani’s writing in Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza is exquisite. But, like any good writer, Kanafani has self-doubts. What if his eloquence distracts, rather than informs, the reader?

“As you read these lines,” he cautions, “don’t get lost in the glow of words. Don’t admire the flow of punctuation or the polish of a well-turned phrase. That’s not the point.”

“This was written by a man scorched by the fire of war, worn down by trial after trial. These sentences aren’t crafted for beauty—they’re pulled from exhaustion, from pain, from the weight of days that never seem to end.”

I don’t think the author need worry. The elegant minimalism of his writing, compiled from December 2024–July 2025 Reddit posts, vividly takes the reader into his life. Or rather, into the faint facsimile of his life, compared to what he once had.

Kanafani began his adult years in a traditional, comfortable, middle-class way. Completing a university degree in engineering, he built a home, found a wife, had children.

Then, in 2023, Middle East hostilities flared anew. The militant Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel. In retaliation, Israel attacked Gaza. The bombardment destroyed the Kanafanis’ home, along with most of their country.

The family now only has a tent for shelter. At night, wind batters the tent’s fragile walls. “In the darkness, the tent becomes a doorless prison—a cramped space where anxiety and dread cling to the air.” Every gust of wind carries threat of an explosion, while every “silence feels like the breath before disaster.”

Moreover, says Kanafani, the “hanging piece of fabric separating me from my nearest neighbours barely conceals the view, let alone sound. Everyone can hear everyone else; there is no privacy at all.”

Pizza Before We Die is Kanafani’s upraised literary fist at the misery war inflicts, in Palestine and, really, everywhere. “What remains is loss. Not just any loss, but a pain unlike any other: the loss of friends and loved ones, the people closest to my heart.”

The life Kanafani once knew, quiet mornings, trips to the market, sounds of children playing, “is unreachable, like a dream I can barely remember.” The Pizza in his book’s title evokes his longing for the normal, the comfortingly mundane. Yet even that memory is slipping away: “Every time I think of a slice of pizza, I see blood dripping from the cheese.”

I applaud Kanafani and his editor, Yasuko Thanh. I think Pizza Before We Die fulfils Kanafani’s resolve to show what Gaza has become, “to speak of these endless days so that the world will know what we lived through.”

I can also assure him that exquisite writing doesn’t divert the reader. On the contrary. If readers like the sound of words, they’re far more likely to tune into them.

About the Author

Hassan Kanafani (he/him) is from Gaza. This name is a pseudonym for the author, who is a graduate of the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

About the Editor

Yasuko Thanh (she/her) is a writer and a creative writing instructor at the University of Victoria. Her first novel, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains (Penguin Canada), a tale of rebellion in French Indochina, won the 2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her memoir, Mistakes to Run With (Penguin Canada), reflections on her journey from sex worker to successful writer, was a finalist for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes.

About the Reviewer

Melanie Jackson is a Vancouver writer/editor. She’s also the award-winning author of middle-grade/YA suspensers, including Orca Books’ Dinah Galloway Mystery Series, and several chillers set in amusement parks. Visit Melanie at The Writers’ Union of Canada.

Book Details

• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press, May 5, 2026

• Language: English

• Paperback: 112 pages

• ISBN: ‎9781834050324