A debut novel in stories · Gaza
INHALE
a novel in stories · استنشق
The Book · November 2026
Evidence, not spectacle —
one breath, one page,
one frequency at a time.
Inhale is a novel in stories that accumulate until they begin to answer one another: a prologue pulled from static; sutures counted down to the last in triage; permits that rename the living. Here, paperwork decides who moves and who disappears, and those who forge it are not criminals so much as locksmiths: they make the dead mobile so the living can cross. Arabic threads through the English, refusing domestication. The siege is not metaphorical.
From Gaza's checkpoints to basements that sweat salt, seawater pools behind the teeth — carried without swallowing, held without speaking. A death certificate is stamped on a body still breathing. Grandma scratches years beneath bowls — 1948, 1967, 1987 — and lifts one to your ear. In Khan Younis, Shireen stitches; in Shifa, a widow asks for her husband's papers. Forgetting never gets cheaper here.
The sea doesn't translate; it transmits. You open — just the mouth — hold the water, unspilled, and inhale.
University of North Texas Press · Katherine Anne Porter Prize, Vol. 25
Paperback $16.95 · 288 pages · Also as a DRM-free e-book · 11.15.2026
Praise & Prize
Praise for Inhale
I devoured Inhale the same way the characters in war-ravaged Gaza devour pilfered drugs… There is a ruthless honesty in these stories, and also a ruthless beauty. I want to press Inhale into the hands of every reader. It is a survival manual, a collection of searing, unforgettable stories.
— Patricia Henley · Final judge · author of Hummingbird House, National Book Award finalist
“In Gaza the honey tastes of gunpowder because the bees have sipped from bullet holes… It's a place where sunlight breaks on razor wire like cold splinters of gin, and cemeteries smell of crushed mint.”
“Full of gorgeous imagery and glorious music — and crucially, literary technique is always in service of the heart, one deeply attuned to that which usually goes unnoticed, unpoemed.”
“A work of profound intelligence and compassion, reminding us that preservation often begins with attention to the ordinary — a recipe, a place's name, a family story, or even just a bay leaf.”
University of North Texas Press
a first book, chosen by Patricia Henley
Commonweal Magazine
The Geography of Inhale · خريطة
Twenty-one points of light on the map of Gaza
“The rain was falling on the flat roofs of the camps and the broken ground of Shejaiya where the rebar rose from rubble, on the alleys of the old city and the minarets and the dark restless sea that stretched toward places we had only ever been as words in someone else's mouth.”
Every story in Inhale is rooted somewhere real. Follow the string of lights from the prologue's held breath to the last frequency — click a bulb, or let the journey carry you. Selecting the final chapter lights the whole string.
Read · The Prologue
Declare the contents.
— Voice recording, partially recovered. Speaker not identified. Duration: unknown.
استنشق
Q: Declare the contents. Provide evidence. Is it liquid, is it seed, is it weapon.
I was filled the way my grandmother's bowls were filled — cobalt enamel, rim-nicked where the spoon struck over and again: one for each well gone brackish, one for the gate's red paint lifting in flakes, one for the concrete year — dust in the rice, in the alveoli, chalking even prayer — one for the war, one for the war after the war.
Q: Identity document? Valid name? Expiration?
At the checkpoint between the writer and the sentence the contents were asked to produce valid identification. The contents could not comply. The contents offered the name a mother stitched into a collar. Adjectives: confiscated. Vocal folds: flagged. Margins: stamped DELAY.
Q: Recipient? Intended use?
You. I have carried this to your teeth — the way the bowl was carried to my ear, the way the bowl, meaning everything, declared its contents to no one… I am asking with the last of the breath I was given, I am asking you to open — just the mouth — the salt, thread, and name pooling at the lip, still water, unspilled —
لا تبلع، لا تتكلم
don't swallow, don't speak
STATUS: PENDINGA Note on Gaza
As it stood. As it is remembered.
The map on this site draws Gaza as the novel remembers it — streets, camps, and rooms where these stories live. Many of the places pinned here have since been damaged or destroyed, and the people who made them are living through what no book can hold. This site does not try to speak for them.
Inhale insists on evidence, not spectacle. If the book moves you toward the actual place, let it move you all the way: read Palestinian writers, and support the medical and humanitarian workers who stay.
Readings & Events
Beginning Fall 2026
To invite R. Kumra for a reading, festival, class visit, or book club: bookings@inhale.ink
Pre-order · Ships November 15, 2026
Take the breath home.
Paperback $16.95 · 288 pages · University of North Texas Press
Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, Volume 25
Pre-orders help a debut find its shelf. If you already know you'll read Inhale, ordering now — and, if you can, from an independent bookstore — genuinely moves it further into the world.