No One Knows Their Blood Type - Paperback

by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (Author), Hazem Jamjoum (Translator), Maya Abu Al-Hayyat (Author)

Shortlisted for the 2025 First Translation Prize from the American Literary Translators Association
Longlisted for the 2025 National Translation Award in Prose from the American Literary Translators Association

No One Knows Their Blood Type is a novel of identity, belonging, and conflicting truths--of stories, secrets, songs, rumors, and lies. On the day that her father dies, Jumana makes a discovery about her blood type. Hers could not have been inherited from her father--the father she sometimes longed for, but always despised. This extraordinary novel of Palestine centers its narrative not on the battlefield of history, but on how women live every day and the colonial context of their embodied lives. With humor and exhilarating inventiveness, it asks: why aren't questions of love, friendship, parenthood, and desire at the core of our conversations about liberty and freedom? How would this transform our ideas of resistance?

Author Biography

Born in 1980 in Lebanon, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat is an Arabic-language Palestinian novelist, poet, and children's book author. She edited The Book of Ramallah, an anthology of short stories published by Comma Press in 2021. Her children's book A Blue Pond of Questions was translated into English and published by Penny Candy Books. An English translation of her poetry appeared from Milkweed Editions under the title You Can Be the Last Leaf, translated by Fady Joudah and named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.