Between Two Mornings is a novel that unfolds over a single day in Gaza—from six in the morning until four the next morning—following twelve ordinary people as they try to keep themselves, and each other, from disappearing. Lujain, a young girl, learns from her teacher Noor that “a person does not become zero.” Her father, Abu Wissam, stands in a distribution line and insists his family is seven, though the register says five. Samer runs from hospital to hospital clutching a photograph of his missing brother Tariq. Rahaf, a nursing student, delivers a baby in a tent with one glove and a shrinking bottle of water. A photographer named Hassan must decide when to raise his camera and when to set it down. An old man counts his grandchildren each night. A poet carries half a bucket of water. A mother sends one message: “I am here.”

Anas Al-Madhoun writes with devastating restraint, refusing spectacle and refusing despair. Each chapter is a door into a life that cannot be reduced to a number, a list, or a headline. The novel asks not for pity but for attention: see the person before the news, the name before the list, the hand that tried even when it could not succeed. In the conclusion, the book reveals what happened to each character—and in doing so, demands that they be remembered not as casualties, but as people who wrote, counted, taught, searched, healed, witnessed, and preserved. Between Two Mornings is a work of witness and of love, insisting that even an unfinished morning deserves to be noticed.

Key words: Gaza, literary fiction, displacement, Palestinian literature, war fiction, human resilience, Arabic novel