3gs - by Tamer Nafar (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From "the Chuck D of Palestinian hip-hop" (Los Angeles Times), a memoir of three generations of one Palestinian family up against loss, oppression, and a shape-shifting past, present, and future, in a work of stunning originality and kinetic energy

3Gs tells the stories of a father, his son, and his son's future daughter--Fawzi, Tamer, and Shaden Nafar--three generations of fracture and dissonance, stubborn insistence, love, hope, and the will to create. It's also the story of a town--Lyd to the Palestinians who fled there in 1948, Lod to Jewish Israelis--built of people from elsewhere, swamped by crime and poverty, and, in the not-too-distant future, off-limits to those who call it Lyd.

Fawzi, Tamer's father, keeps his head down as the '48 expulsion lives in his bones. He gets by, passing as a postman though he can't read, installing boilers, and playing in a wedding band, until an accident puts him in a wheelchair. Tamer keeps his head up and his voice loud, spitting punchlines and cries of fury, not leaving Lyd even as the violence comes for his own. He will come to a point of understanding and gentle respect for the father who, he always thought, hadn't fought back. Shaden is the future--no longer living in Lyd, she risks returning to save its artifacts and memories in Palestine in the cloud, a place beyond conquest and capture.

Part oral history, part fable, part self-analysis, 3Gs defies the expectations of memoir and the literature of Palestine. With the emotional vastness of a multi-generational novel and the rhythmic force of rap, 3Gs is a wildly innovative work of power and pathos that introduces a master storyteller.

Review Quotes

"Tamer Nafar's extraordinary memoir-novel introduces us to three generations of a Palestinian family, who find themselves moving--sometimes racing, sometimes crawling--through the wreckage of history. Amid unrelenting upheaval, they make meaning and music of their lives by joyful, painful, and powerful attachments to family, friends, and place. 3Gs is formally daring, emotionally devastating, and truly unforgettable."
--Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop and Water Mirror Echo

"Nobody has created a triptych this stunning since Hieronymus Bosch. 3Gs weaves history and imagination into an earthy, hypnotic story of place and displacement, trauma and memory, music and resistance, fueled by three indelible voices crying out against the obliterating power of the state."
--Adam Mansbach, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golem of Brooklyn and The Wrong Body

"Magnetic, haunting, and darkly funny, 3Gs is an account of Palestinian family and peoplehood that explodes our ideas of what resistance might look like and what a memoir can be. Written with pain, joy, a ferocious wit and soaring imagination, Tamer Nafar's debut is a revelation and triumph."
--Natasha Lyonne

"Blending memoir, fiction, family history, hip-hop, humor, and the rhythms of oral storytelling, 3Gs is an audacious act of imagination and a stunning act of remembrance."
--Mo Amer

About the Author

Tamer Nafar is a Palestinian rapper, actor, writer, and social activist living in Israel, widely credited as the godfather of Arabic hip-hop. He discovered hip-hop at seventeen, listening to Tupac and learning the lyrics using an English-Arabic dictionary. Going on to become a founder and the front man of DAM, he released three albums with the group and one solo album, rapping in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. He has been the subject of the documentary film Slingshot Hip Hop, and he cowrote and starred in a feature film, Junction 48. 3Gs is his first book.