Author HASSAN KANAFANI is from Gaza, and is a graduate from the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
Editor YASUKO THANH (she/her) is a writer and a creative writing instructor at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Occupied Territories of the Lekwungen Peoples. She has, in addition to editing the book, written a foreword that provides context for Hassan’s powerful story.
The genocide unfolding in Gaza has been made all the more tragic by the widespread denial and apathy expressed by much of the rest of the world. This book is an urgent first-hand account of life and death in Gaza, written not by a war correspondent but by an ordinary citizen whose life upended when the genocide began.
In the midst of this mass murder Hassan Kanafani began posting about his daily experiences on Reddit (a social media news and discussion site). Three activists, moved by his words, started collecting his posts with no plan – only conviction that his story needed to be seen and the hope that somehow, it might help raise funds for him. By chance, those posts found their way to award-winning author Yasuko Thanh, who helped Hassan edit them for a book.
Hassan’s posts are a vivid, heartbreaking account of the genocide and its toll – on families, on children, on innocent civilians. These are stories of hunger, survival, and death, and they need to be heard! And yet, stories like these are not being told: mainstream media has largely remained silent. Foreign journalists are barred from Gaza and local journalists are being killed. Hassan’s voice fills this void, and breaks through darkness and into the light.
Pizza Before We Die is literary journalism at its rawest and most urgent – clear eyed, unflinching, and deeply humane. Hassan captures the unspeakable horror of the genocide in Gaza with restraint and precision, never sensationalizing, always bearing witness. It is a work of raw power and emotion and a reminder that in the midst of chaos and tragedy, our shared humanity remains intact.
“Pizza Before We Die is a raw work of witness from the ground level of a genocide. Hassan Kanafani writes in the most unvarnished and yet precise way about the reality of what it means to have one’s home reduced to rubble. The smallest, most intricate detail of daily survival bleeds into the most overarching view of atrocity. In its deep dignity and commitment to life, this collection of snapshots is both intimate and powerful.”
— Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
“In Pizza Before We Die, Hassan Kanafani records the atrocities of genocide alongside the relentless search for basic day-to-day necessities that every Palestinian in Gaza faces—conditions by design stripped bare. This is both an account of the facts and a psychological portrait of endurance that acknowledges the costs such endurance exacts. What emerges is not a headline or a viral moment, but a life lived under catastrophe.”
— Garth Martens, author of Who Else in the Dark Headed There
“Within these pages you will find moments of horror from Gaza frozen into words. They will kindle a necessary rage at the inhumanity inherent in Israel and Zionism. A vital and necessary read in the best tradition of Refaat Alareer.”
— Aamir Hussain author of “Under the Full and Crescent Moon”
“Deeply humane and urgently necessary, Hassan has kept his promise to survive and tell these stories, and now, dear reader, these stories and lives are also our responsibility to carry.”
— Carrianne Leung, author of That Time I Loved You
A portion of proceeds from the sale of Pizza Before We Die will be donated to Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières.
The book will be released in May 2026.