The Book of Disappearance (Arabic: سفر الأختيفاء) is a novel by Palestinian writer and journalist Ibtisam Azem.

Alaa connects his grandmother's complicated love of the city to his own, and explores both's reckoning with the pain of separation from their displaced family members and of Tel Aviv's overwriting of Jaffa's and their own history.

Ariel quickly begins to act with more and more ownership over Alaa's empty apartment, sleeping and spending most of his time there and even planning to change the lock.

As the book ends, Ariel hears a rattling and a whispering coming from outside Alaa's apartment, though he cannot find the source.

In an interview, Azem said of the book, "The novel does revolve around the total disappearance of Palestinians, but it takes this event beyond the colonial ideology of Zionism which wants to erase and replace the colonized.

"[5] ArabLit writes, "Mass disappearance is a theme that often permeates Palestinian narratives, but Azem’s novel brings a new, speculative-fiction twist.

[2] According to a reviewer from Strange Horizons, she described at the 2020 Palestine Writes Festival that in the novel "she sought to not just center the Israeli reaction, but to first establish the Palestinian presence .