Abdel-Fattah’s new novel follows a journalist and an academic navigating censorship in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza – an issue the author is no stranger to herself Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email In 2021, when Randa Abdel-Fattah first began working on her latest novel, Discipline, she questioned whether a story about state violence, the right to protest, and the racialisation of Arab youth in Australia would resonate. Suspicion of Arab communities – particularly young Muslim men – in media and political commentary had been potent in the years after 9/11 and had formed the subject of her academic research (and her 2022 nonfiction book Coming of Age in the War on Terror) – but, she says, the issue seemed to have “fallen off the radar”. She wondered whether people still thought it was a problem deserving of attention, and even emailed her publisher in September 2023 to ask if they believed there was a market for the novel. Continue reading...