Description
By (author) Shehab, Ezzideen
:
A powerful eyewitness account of the genocide in Gaza by an extraordinary young writer and general physician.
Five days before 7 October 2023, a young Palestinian doctor returns to Gaza, having completed his medical studies abroad. His family gathers to celebrate his achievements and to welcome him home. On 11 October, forty-two members of his extended family are killed in an airstrike, and thus begins his incredible story of survival and service to his people.
For more than eight months, Dr Ezzideen Shehab volunteers at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, witnessing at first hand catastrophic injuries and deaths, and working under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Constantly targeted by the Israeli Defence Forces, the Indonesian hospital is ultimately destroyed.
In December 2024, Dr Shehab co-founds the Al-Rahma Medical Clinic to provide free medical care in northern Gaza, where no functioning hospitals remain. The clinic is damaged multiple times, and in July 2025 is forced to close. Dr Shehab and his family are displaced for the fifth time, with no hope of ever returning to their demolished home in the north of Gaza.
In his testimony of these months, Dr Shehab’s clarity and humanity shine through. He describes the people he treats, the devastation of his homeland, and his incomprehension at the world’s silence in the face of the unfolding genocide. Diary of a Young Doctor is a deeply moving and unforgettable work that bears witness to one of the most shameful periods in recent history.
Review quote:
‘I literally fell to my knees and wept on finishing this book. As the doctor suggests the whole world should. Nothing has conveyed to us so powerfully the unbearable shame of being safe, being complicit, or being silent, while Gaza is murdered, while Gaza is starved and destroyed. This is more than literature or reportage, this is a reckoning with the undeniable failure of humanity. The world has chosen to fail Gaza and this book is a staggeringly powerful witness to and indictment of that evil. It is a real-time account from inside the atrocity and it should shatter indifference. It is a miracle of resilience, clarity, and truth. It reckons with the unfathomable and should shake the souls of millions. It might stun you, but please, not to silence. Scream the doctor’s words from the rooftops. Scream his right to live.’
Review quote:
‘To open this book is to descend into the circles of hell and witness human beings enduring the unendurable … In stories that could have come straight from the Old Testament … The beauty of Shehab’s prose and the depth of his compassion for the people he tries to help makes his diary a document of heartrending power and eloquence.’
Review quote:
‘Ezzideen’s book is essential reading for every single person alive today, and every person in the future looking back on this haunting time. This book is a diary, but it is also poetry, and art, and hope, and a call to courage. It is a remarkable achievement in so many ways and it will irrevocably change all who read it. Please, I urge you, read it, read it again, give it to a friend, give it to a stranger. Just read it. The world owes a huge debt to Ezzideen.’
Review quote:
‘Dr Ezzideen’s harrowing but tender stories of the barely living will haunt me long after the images of death and destruction fade. Beneath the political rubble there are human beings, enduring the unendurable, and Ezzideen bears witness with mounting grief and fury, his words unveiling the true horrors of this genocide even as his own heart and soul splinter across the page.’
Review quote:
‘With every entry, Ezzideen stitches together what is left of our humanity and reminds us of the terrible privilege of bearing witness. His empathy, hono
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