Hannah Lillith Assadi discusses her exiled Palestinian father

Hannah Lilith Assadi discusses her latest novel, *Paradiso 17*, a deeply personal work inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father, who was exiled during the Nakba in 1948. Raised between cultures in Arizona and New York, Assadi reflects on her childhood shaped by the intersection of Jewish and Palestinian identities, religious observance, and the weight of displacement. Her father’s journey—from Syria and Kuwait to the U.S.—and his complex relationship with identity, assimilation, and loss are central to the novel. Written in the immediate aftermath of his death in 2022, the book became a private act of mourning and a way to honor his unacknowledged suffering. Assadi grapples with the emotional and political weight of writing about her father’s story amid the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine, acknowledging the difficulty of balancing personal grief with global atrocity. The novel’s title draws from Dante’s *Paradiso* Canto 17, which deals with exile and prophecy, mirroring the themes of displacement, memory, and the afterlife that permeate the narrative. Assadi reflects on her father’s decision to stop speaking Arabic to her in childhood, a choice driven by his desire for her to assimilate in America, which she now regrets. She emphasizes that *Paradiso 17* is not her story, but her father’s—written to give voice to a man who felt defeated and unrecognized. She remains hesitant to write a memoir, feeling unprepared to address the scale of recent violence in the region. The novel’s completion was guided by a trusted editorial team, especially her American editor, who helped trim a lengthy ending. Ultimately, the book stands as both a tribute to her father and a meditation on diaspora, memory, and the enduring legacy of historical trauma.