Literature's Zone of Silence by Poppy Gee

What “great literary influence” do you secretly think is overrated—but are afraid to say publicly?

I am afraid to publish the following thoughts. So here goes...

We are currently living in an era when the veneer of Western civility is permanently rusted and corroded by the decision of Western governments to inflict carnage on innocent people who happen to live in a place we call the Middle East. 

How writers choose to write about the world's first livestreamed genocide is interesting. Many will avoid it altogether. In my opinion, there’s space for that. Readers need rom-coms and fun thrillers, heartfelt love poems and transportive historical novels; reading is what will keep us sane in these terrible times. However, it's interesting to look at how the events in Palestine and Israel are finding their way into the literary canon. 

Two books by award winning authors that I recently read that relate to this were The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout and Howl by Howard Jacobson. Both novels left me disappointed. 

In The Things We Never Say, history teacher Artie thinks the world has gone mad. It's Trump's America and 'good people' like Artie feel unanchored, confused about his relationships with the people in his life. It's a compelling read, I gave it four stars on Goodreads. However, this is a book about a man reacting to the atrocities in the world, from Ukraine to Palestine. And yet, in the entire book, the author does not use the word Palestine once. The people from Ukraine are never described as being from Kyiv; yet Palestinian people being ethnically cleansed are only ever referred to as being from Gaza. 

The deliberate choice of wording has the effect of dehumanising a group of people by denying them a nationality. It gives Zone of Interest vibes: Let's pretend Palestine doesn't exist, it's just a group of unruly people in an enclave called Gaza. The fact is, the people who reside in Gaza are mostly refugees, or descended from refugees who once lived in villages on Palestinian land now called Israel. Strout’s authorial decision left me wishing the author had more clarity and courage, especially, and ironically, in a book that aspires to delve into the mysteries of 'the things we never say'. 

Howl is written by an award-winning Jewish author. I'm reluctant to criticise a Jewish author - the world is a tough place for many Jewish people right now. However, Howl was a book that left me cold. Howl is about a primary school headmaster, Ferdinand, who is preoccupied with the idea that October 7, and the world's reaction to the carpet bombing that followed it, stems solely from antisemitism. The character is understandly upset and heartbroken about Israeli suffering but, quite confoundingly, has zero empathy for any of the Palestinian people murdered or displaced. Their suffering barely merits a mention. In this book, anyone in the pro-Palestine movement is ignorant, uninformed, a likely lunatic, and unquestionably antisemitic. This ludicrous idea is never interrogated. 

The most potentially interesting character is Ferdinand's daughter Zoe. Zoe is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and she attends pro-Palestine rallies. This is an interesting intersection for a character, especially as the daughter of a rigid man of limited empathy. And yet, Zoe barely gets any page time. We don't get to know her at all. Instead, the novel reads like a cold hearted rant. Howl is a good name for this book; but perhaps it would have been better to give it an empathetic rewrite and call it Sorrow. 

I recently read The Paradise Pact, an excellent, smart rom-com by Anita Heiss, in which the main character Abbey, a Wiradyuri woman, is searching for the man of her dreams. Notably, she's single because her relationship failed due to that particular man not caring about Palestine. This plot point is plausible, timely, honest and humane. Similarly, Hailstones Fell Without Rain by Natalia Figuero Barroso is about a Urguayan-Australian woman Rita who returns to her family's ancestral land. She's distressed about Palestine, and draws parallels between genocide in all three countries. Randa Abdel-Fattah wrote her novel Discipline about the consequences faced by an academic and a journalist for speaking up during Israel's bombardment of Gaza during Ramadam 2021. The Sunbird by Sara Haddad is about a Nakba survivor in her eighties, living in Sydney, reflecting on her childhood in Palestine before her family were expelled in 1948. These examples are recently published novels, that are not solely about Palestine, but portray a character who is explicitly aware of the profound moral failure that is happening in the the world right now. 

Why does it make me scared to write a blog about this topic? 

When a person speaks about this topic, there is a consequence. One small example of this, for me, has been 'unfollows' on social media from writer colleagues, family members, and even dear friends who attended my wedding. These are people who would, if they saw me in the street, cross the road and greet me with a hug... that was until I said, 'stop the genocide in Palestine'. 

When our current literature is studied in the future, readers will study absences and nuances. Just like how we ask: Why did Jane Austin only vaguely refer to the institution of slavery? How does antisemitism appear in The Great Gatsby? Why was Bertha hidden in the attic in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre? All Australian university English Majors my age have read Patrick White's Fringe of Leaves, in which he has a white woman living with the Butchulla people who indulge in cannibalism, rape and enslavement - all horrendous things he made up, with no basis in fact. His work is now regarded as racist, colonial propaganda laundered with exquisitely beautiful prose. 

Back to the question, what great literary influence is overrated? I think it’s when award winning authors get attention for publishing books that either skirt cowardly around important issues or are intellectually and emotionally lazy in how they address the issue. As educated readers and writers in 2026, we all know better. And when you know better, you have to do better.