Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

Perfect Victims positions itself as part of a rich and urgent literary lineage, the tradition of Palestinian resistance writing. From Mahmoud Darwish to Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian authors have long used literature not only to express grief and beauty, but to fight against invisibility and erasure. El-Kurd’s contribution modernizes and expands this tradition, blending memoir, polemic, and poetic prose to confront the politics of representation in a media-saturated era. His language is both defiant and lyrical, drawing equally from revolutionary texts and cultural idioms, making the work personal while remaining collectively resonant.

Unlike earlier writers whose works circulated largely in Arabic, El-Kurd writes in English for a global audience, often confronting Western liberalism, NGO discourse, and journalistic “objectivity” head-on. His essays disrupt expectations about tone, politeness, and genre, choosing instead to prioritize clarity and moral urgency. In doing so, El-Kurd reclaims the Palestinian voice from the realm of third-party analysis and returns it to the center of the narrative, not as victim but as agent, speaker, and author.

Moreover, the book engages directly with questions about the literary function of