What Now
By Tareq Baconi
Washington Square Press, November 3, 2026
A stunning, soul-stirring, philosophical, and political treatise on what liberation for Palestine and our world will look like in the twenty-first century.
Palestine is a litmus test, argues writer Tareq Baconi. There are only two possible outcomes to the ongoing apartheid and genocide: justice or annihilation.
Drawing from Baconi’s extensive academic and organizing work with Palestinian and international activists, and from decades of long-standing strategies, What Now distills three strategic principles for a free Palestine to guide activists and allies: refuse the prospect of a divided homeland, resuscitate the revolutionary politics of the Palestinian commitment to freedom and justice, and decompose Zionism. Imagining a Free Palestine is not the same as turning back the clock to pre-1948, Baconi writes, but a new struggle for a just future in the aftermath of Zionism—not by fighting Jewish presence in Palestine, but by ending Jewish political exclusivity. A free Palestine would heal the wounds left in the wake of the second world war, by challenging and upturning the colonial and genocidal mindsets that continue to animate Western thought. The ramifications of justice would therefore extend far beyond the shores of Palestine.
Palestine is the epicenter. The outcome of Palestine’s fight for freedom will determine the future of our globe: whether the second wave of international decolonization will succeed or fail, whether our world order will move further toward collective freedom or fascism.
In the literary tradition of Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, and Edward Said, and perfect for readers of Omar El-Akkad, What Now is a rousing literary manifesto on Palestine and our collective future.
Praise for Fire in Every Direction
“Acclaimed scholar and analyst Baconi chronicles his coming of age as a young gay man and defiant Palestinian. A brilliant and wrenching tale of personal and political awakening.” —Booklist (starred review)
“In this poignant autobiography, queer Palestinian writer and activist Baconi tenderly explores identity, nationality, and family history [....] With lyrical prose and shrewd narrative instincts, Baconi transmutes hardship into comfort. Readers will find it difficult not to be moved.” —Publishers Weekly
“Intimate and vulnerable, creating an unsparing portrait...for all the tragedies, however, it is ultimately a book filled with love, from and for his own family, for the region, Palestine and queer culture.” —The Guardian
“It is difficult to read Tareq Baconi’s intimate, mesmerizing meditation on dispossession and not think about how much safer it would have been to not write a book like this, to leave a dangerous past undisturbed. In stunning detail—both physical and emotional—Baconi traces a story of personal and communal alienation, longing, and liberation. Drawn here in beautiful, crushing clarity is an account of what systems of degradation, fear and theft can do to a person, a society, a world. That Baconi has managed to do all this in a memoir that still feels so firmly rooted in love is a marvel. Fire in Every Direction is a marvel.”
—Omar El Akkad, New York Times bestselling author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“In this moving and generous memoir, Tareq Baconi refuses to separate the story of sexual identity from the story of political commitment, and in so doing models a way to see our personal struggles as intertwined with our collective ones. Fire in Every Direction is a beautiful account of one man's confrontation with the histories, silences, and desires—both communal and private—that have made him who he is.”
—Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost and Recognizing the Stranger
“In this poignant autobiography, queer Palestinian writer and activist Baconi tenderly explores identity, nationality, and family history.” —The Millions
“I love this book. It is beautifully woven and registers acutely at the intimate and global levels of life.”
—Judith Butler, bestselling author of Who's Afraid of Gender
“In Fire in Every Direction, we not only see how the oppression of a people has affected one Palestinian family, but how oppression in all forms—colonialism, patriarchy, homophobia, to name a few—creates dishonesty and masks within all of us. Tareq Baconi offers us a love letter, a blueprint on how to craft a life that questions the present, dreaming a better future in the process. By reading this beautifully honest memoir, we can learn to shed what must be shed in order to regain an allegiance toward justice, toward freedom, toward a liberation for all. Baconi has shown me that revolutions begin in the self; I am forever changed after reading this book.” —Javier Zamora, author of Solito
“In a time when it can feel like language has been stripped of meaning and words have lost all power, Fire in Every Direction arrives as an affirmation and a refusal of silence. Luminous, moving, and achingly beautiful, every page of this book is guided by Tareq Baconi's fierce intelligence and a tenderness that this world does not deserve. You do not read this book to repair your heart, you read this book to understand the fissures.”
—Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
“Outstanding...I found the blend between the personal and political to be very cleverly achieved. A brilliant book.”
—Raja Shehadeh, author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I
“A powerful memoir of queer and Palestinian reckoning. Tareq Baconi creates 'a gaze of our own' by bringing his open heart to a tough confrontation with histories both intimate and diasporic. An important contribution to our many literatures.”
—Sarah Schulman, author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
“With passion, sincerity, and wit, Baconi writes about the world he grew up in, about a time and place long gone, revivified in these beautiful pages. Spending time with the real people in Fire in Every Direction is a delight. Read this book!”
—Rabih Alameddine, author of Comforting Myths and An Unnecessary Woman
“With eloquence, passion, and insight, Tareq Baconi weaves his personal story as a queer kid growing up in the refugee community in Jordan, into the larger narrative of his family’s dislocation, and the Palestinian struggle. In so doing, he gives new meaning to the concept of liberation, personal and political. Fire in Every Direction is a primarily a love story: about how one learns to overcome loss—of a homeland, of a beloved—due to the interventions of authorities, be they parents or conquerors. It is a deeply inspiring and absorbing read, especially in these times.”
—Mark Gevisser, author of The Pink Line
About the Author
Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of What Now, Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction.
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