Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem published her second novel, The Book Of Disappearance, in 2014. It was given a translation, from Arabic to English, five years later, and another half-decade on has been reprinted by UK independent And Other Stories. Its plot never ceased to have grim real-world resonance at that time but carries extra gravity like a millstone as this edition comes out.

It’s set in what is now the Jaffa region of Tel Aviv and has two protagonists. One, Alaa, is a Palestinian whose worldview has been shaped somewhat by the experiences of Tata, his grandmother: six months pregnant during the nakba of 1948, she refused to leave Jaffa and raised Alaa’s mother as a single parent. Tata dies in the early stages of The Book Of Disappearance, with Azem’s prose lending great emotional import (I fancy Sinan Antoon’s translation is crucial here: the use of very short sentences and repeated phrases comes off as intangibly unconventional in English, in a good way.)

The other, Ariel, is an Israeli, and Alaa’s friend. Ariel is inclusive and well-meaning, but politically clumsy on certain matters: Azem sketches him with care, outlining the contradictions inherent to being a liberal supporter of Israel without rendering him as a heel. He works as a news journalist, and so has work to do when, one morning, it transpires that every Palestinian in the country has vanished overnight – not the euphemistic ‘disappearance’ of historical genocides, but a literal one.

The conceit, with all the political metaphors it summons, is handled deftly. As word gets around, Israelis’ reactions range from bafflement to satisfaction – “a problem that we finally managed to solve,” says a caller to a radio show. There is no resolution, and after the disappearance, we only hear from Alaa in the form of his old diary entries, which Ariel reads while living in Alaa’s abandoned flat (perhaps almost too on the nose, this bit). Painting a fantastical scenario with a deeply authentic basis, The Book Of Disappearance proceeds gracefully but harbours righteous anger, and should induce something similar in its readers.