'Inside the Night' is a dream-like account of one man's experience as a Palestinian in exile. It interposes short sequences (sometimes only a sentence or two) from scenes in the man's life. These are, principally his witnessing of a massacre in a refugee camp, and his attempt to return to his homeland many years later. The events related in the book are by turns bloody, brutal and depressing, and 'Inside the Night' is a fairly downbeat book.

Nasrallah's dream-like prose can be a little difficult to get a handle on. At no point does he give names to characters or places, so everything and everyone remains anonymous. I can find prose like this a bit difficult, because my brain finds it harder to form concrete images of the narratives, and that did allow my mind to wander, especially early on. The upside, however, is that this really did transform the book from being a Palestinian story into what felt like the Palestinian story. It was not about a specific person's suffering and exile, but about Palestinian suffering and exile, and, as such, was very effective. The writing/translation succeeds in being very powerful without being unnecessarily shocking (though shocking it is). It is a short book, and I am not sure the prose style could sustain anything much longer without losing me. As it was, this was a highly original book, deftly executed, and one I would be happy to recommend.