Incorporating the Impossible

Female Suicide Terrorism in Before We Say Goodbye

Authors

  • Loes van der Voort Utrecht University

Abstract

The novel Before We Say Goodbye (2004) is endorsed by Amnesty International for contributing to a better understanding of human rights values. It tells the news item story of a Palestinian girl blowing up herself and an Israeli girl in a supermarket. Through exclusion, alienation and destruction, inclusion of both (groups of) individuals in human rights discourse is being sabotaged by the Israeli state, as well as by the Palestinian individual, who are polarized in the tension of being at once each other’s victim and perpetrator. This paper explores this complex web of human rights violations and finally explains how, and at what cost, the representation of the suicide attack that addresses the seemingly irresolvable dichotomy is precisely what makes this novel a claim for human rights.

Author Biography

  • Loes van der Voort, Utrecht University

    Loes van der Voort holds a BA and an MA in Comparative Literary Studies (Utrecht University). Her interests lie at the intersection of academia and activism, where she focuses on human rights, religion and identity formation in relation to conflict. Her article on the war on terror and identity will appear in a forthcoming volume of the book series “Intercultural knowledge” (WVT), edited by Philippe Humblé and Arvi Sepp (the Free University of Brussels).

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 27 No. 1 (2014): Human Rights and Literature

Section

Main Section

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

van der Voort, L. (2026). Incorporating the Impossible: Female Suicide Terrorism in Before We Say Goodbye. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 27(1), 65-78. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27403