La chute du mur de Berlin a fait miroiter un monde où tous les murs tomberaient, mais jamais l'humanité n'en a érigés autant qu'aujourd'hui. Dans un reportage de terrain vivant et sensible, Un monde enclavé nous amène à la rencontre des femmes et des hommes qui vivent à l'ombre du béton armé. Du Sahara occidental, à la clôture qui sépare un quartier riche d'un quartier pauvre dans la ville de Montréal, en passant par Ceuta et Melilla, Chypre, le Bangladesh, la Palestine, l'Irlande et le Mexique, Marcello Di Cintio donne à voir l'étendue des ravages causés par la construction d'enclaves. Qu'elles soient hérissées de barbelés ou faites de ciment et de pierres, ces barrières échouent généralement dans leurs prétentions sécuritaires, et nourrissent la peur et la haine. Mais paradoxalement, comme le montrent ceux et celles qui ont le courage de les surmonter et l'imagination pour les transformer, les murs inspirent aussi leur propre subversion.

"Leaving aside the usual political covens and an inclination to despair, Di Cintio's lucid account of present-day Palestine is the inspired portrait of a nation in dialog with its ghosts past and future affirming its right to be. This is a necessary book for our bewildered times." - Alberto Manguel, author of A History of ReadingMarcello Di Cintio first visited Palestine in 1999. Like most outsiders, the Palestinian narrative that he knew had been simplified by a seemingly unending struggle, a near-Sisyphean curse of stories of oppression, exile, and occupation told over and over again. In Pay No Heed to the Rockets, he reveals a more complex story, the Palestinian experience as seen through the lens of authors, books, and literature. Using the form of a political-literary travelogue, he explores what literature means to modern Palestinians and how Palestinians make sense of the conflict between a rich imaginative life and the daily tedium and violence of survival.Di Cintio begins his journey on the Allenby Bridge that links Jordan to Palestine. He visits the towns and villages of the West Bank, passes into Jerusalem, and then travels through Israel before crossing into Gaza. En route, he meets with poets, authors, librarians, and booksellers. He begins to see Palestine through their eyes, through their stories.In the company of literary giants like Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani, and the contemporary authors whom they continue to inspire, Di Cintio travels through the rich cultural and literary heritage of Palestine. It's there that he uncovers a humanity, and a beauty, often unnoticed by news media. At the seventieth anniversary of the Arab-Israeli War, Pay No Heed to the Rockets tells a fresh story about Palestine, one that begins with art rather than war.

Winner, Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Winner, Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction Winner, City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize Finalist, Dolman Travel Book Award Longlisted, Alberta Readers' Choice Award Longlisted, BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Longlisted, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-FictionIn this ambitious blend of travel and reportage, Marcello Di Cintio travels to the world's most disputed edges to meet the people who live alongside the razor wire and answer the question: What does it mean to live against the walls? Di Cintio shares tea with Saharan refugees on the wrong side of Morocco's desert wall. He meets with illegal Punjabi migrants who have circumvented the fencing around the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. He visits fenced-in villages in northeast India, walks Arizona's migrant trails, and travels to Palestinian villages to witness the protests against Israel's security barrier. From Native American reservations on the US-Mexico border and the "Great Wall of Montreal" to Cyprus's divided capital and the Peace Lines of Belfast, Di Cintio seeks to understand what these structures say about those who build them and how they influence the cultures that they surround. Some walls define "us" from "them" with medieval clarity. Some walls encourage fear or feed hate. Others kill. And every wall inspires its own subversion, whether by the infiltrators who dare to go over, under or around them, or by the artists who transform them.