Thrall is known for his 2023 nonfiction work A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, and is a contributor to several literary magazines.
[1] Thrall was a member of the editorial staff of The New York Review of Books, before being hired at the International Crisis Group by Robert Malley.
"[14] Mosaic selected the book as one of the best of the year, writing, "A knowledgeable and bold retelling of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that forces readers to take a serious and fresh look at their assumptions.
[27] The Financial Times named it a best book of 2023 in two categories, Literary Nonfiction[19] and Politics,[28] stating, "This quietly heartbreaking work of non-fiction reads like a novel.
At its centre is a tragic road accident outside Jerusalem in the West Bank from which Thrall, a Jewish American journalist, carefully traces the labyrinthine lives of those involved and the tangled web of politics, history and culture that ensnare them all.
[34] The article was covered in The Washington Post,[35] Foreign Policy,[36] The American Prospect,[37] Jewish Currents,[38] European publications,[39][40] the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,[41] a podcast episode hosted by New York Times columnist Peter Beinart,[42] and a two-part, forty-minute segment on Democracy Now!