No Way But Forward
Reviews

No Way but Forward is a book of extraordinary closeness. It is not written from a distance–not intellectually, not emotionally, and certainly not geographically. Brian K. Barber has spent nearly thirty years returning to Gaza, not as a journalist on assignment, but as a friend, a witness, and a person who has allowed his own life to be shaped by the lives of others. I’ve long believed that literature must do more than reflect the world–it must implicate us in it. This book does just that. Through Barber’s careful, unflinching storytelling, we are drawn into the lives of Hammam, Hussam, and Khalil–three men navigating education, fatherhood, loss, and resistance under the shadow of occupation and siege. What emerges is not only a portrait of Gaza, but of human endurance in its most luminous form.

I have read many accounts of Palestine, but few as intimate, as unselfconscious, or as quietly radical as this one. There is no performance here–only relationship. Only love, really. The kind of love that demands attention, that refuses to forget, that insists on telling the truth even when the truth is unbearable. The final chapters, written in the wake of the events of October 7, 2023, are almost too painful to read. And yet they must be read. Because to love Palestine–as I do–is to bear witness. It is to honour the stories that continue to unfold in the ruins. It is to recognize that even in the face of annihilation, there are voices speaking, still. This is not a book that asks for pity. It asks for solidarity. And in that solidarity, it offers something like hope–not abstract or sentimental, but grounded in the dignity of real lives, still being lived.