Fiction

palestinian literature

okay! so as someone with a degree in literature… i figured i would also suggest some palestinian literature for you to read. fair warning: i haven’t read all of these yet so i apologise on the lack of warnings on any extremely triggering content

fiction

❥ Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa

Nahr is a woman born in 1970s Kuwait to Palestinian refugees. The story follows key details of her life and switches between her past (and all the hardships she endured as a palestinian woman) and the present (where she is kept in solitary confinement in israel) and all the events that lead up to her capture.

*note: sexual violence mention

❥ A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum

A story that touches upon the immigration experience, misogyny, oppression, domestic abuse, and cultural expectations and taboos—through the eyes of three generations of Arab women. A book written about arab women, for arab women.

❥ Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands - Sonia Nimr

A historical folkloric novel about a palestinian girl, Qamar, who develops great healing skills and travels around the region, sometimes dressed as a man.

❥ Salt Houses - Hala Alyan

The novel follows the story of a displaced family, the Yacoubs, over multiple decades in the various places they move to—from Jaffa to Kuwait to Amman to Paris and then finally Boston. The plot challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand—one that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can’t go home again.

❥ Minor Detail - Adania Shibli

The novel begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba―the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people―and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand. 25 years later a girl starts investigating this very crime and becomes particularly obsessed with it, mainly because it happened exactly 25 years before she was born.

*note: sexual violence mention

❥ The Parisian - Isabella Hammad

After the First World War (1914-18) shatters families, destroys friendships and kills lovers, Midhat Kamal goes on a journey of self discovery. The novel touches upon the tangled politics and personal tragedies of a turbulent era: the struggle of Palestinian independence from the British Mandate, the strife of the early 20th century, and the looming second world war.

❥ My First and Only Love - Sahar Khalifeh

After many decades of restless exile, Nidal returns to her family home in Nablus, where she lived with her grandmother before the 1948 Nakba. She was a young girl when the resistance began and through the bloodshed, she had fallen in love with a freedom fighter, Rabie, the only man she ever loved—him, and all that he represented: Palestine in its youth and spring. Years later Nidal and Rabie meet and through his encouragement, Nidal decides to look into her family history and discovers that her absent mother had been a nurse and lover to a Palestinian leader.

❥ Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa

The story follows the life of the Abulhejas, a family forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod, and moved to a refugee camp in Jenin following the 1948 Nakba. A palestinian story told through four generations of the same family, it weaves the daily experiences of life in a refugee camp with major Palestinian-Israeli clashes of three decades.

❥ These Olive Trees - Aya Ghanameh

A book of illustrations that tell the story of a Palestinian family’s connection to their land and the olive trees that grow outside their refugee camp, and the solemness that follows once they are forced to be uprooted again, leaving their precious olive trees behind. Oraib, a young girl, makes a promise to her beloved olive trees: that she will make sure their legacy lives on for generations to come.

❥ Squire - Nadia Shammas

Aiza has always dreamt of becoming a Knight. It's the highest military honor in the Bayt-Sajji Empire, and as a member of the subjugated Ornu people, Knighthood is her only path to full citizenship. Ravaged by famine and mounting tensions, Bayt-Sajji finds itself on the brink of war once again, so Aiza can finally enlist in the competitive Squire training program. However, it is not how she imagined. As the pressure mounts, Aiza realizes that the "greater good" that Bayt-Sajji's military promises might not include her, and that the recruits might be in greater danger than she ever imagined. Aiza will have to choose, once and for all: loyalty to her heart and heritage, or loyalty to the Empire.

❥ The Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction

Under the Israeli occupation of the '70s and '80s, writers in Gaza had to go to considerable lengths to ever have a chance of seeing their work in print. Manuscripts were written out longhand, invariably under pseudonyms, and smuggled out of the Strip to Jerusalem, Cairo or Beirut, where they then had to be typed up. Consequently, fiction grew shorter, novels became novellas, and short stories flourished as the city's form of choice. Indeed, to Palestinians elsewhere, Gaza became known as 'the exporter of oranges and short stories'. This anthology brings together some of the pioneers of the Gazan short story from that era, as well as younger exponents of the form, that offer glimpses of life in the Strip that go beyond the global media headlines.

❥ Men in the Sun - Ghassan Kanafani

Men in the Sun follows three Palestinian refugees seeking to travel from the refugee camps in Iraq, where they cannot find work, to Kuwait where they hope to find work as laborers in the oil boom.

❥ The Land of Sad Oranges - Ghassan Kanafani

This is a short story that follows the aftermath of the Nakba, where families are displaced from Jaffa to Acre, and eventually from Acre to Lebanon. Kanafani writes,

“I watched the long line of cars enter Lebanon, leaving long behind them the land of orange. I started wailing. Your mother was still looking in silence at the oranges. In your father’s eyes were the reflection of all the orange trees he had left behind for the Israelis, all the clean orange trees he had planted one by one, glittered in his face. He failed to stop the tears that filled up in his eyes, when he came to face the head police officer. When we reached Saida in the afternoon, we became refugees.”

The oranges in this story represent everything Palestinians left behind when they were forced from their land to become refugees, and the rootedness of Palestinians to their homeland.

Read it here

❥ Palestine’s Children: Return to Haifa and Other Stories - Ghassan Kanafani

Politics and the novel, Ghassan Kanafani once said, are an indivisible case. His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century. In Palestine's Children, each story involves a child who is victimized by political events and circumstances, but who nevertheless participates in the struggle toward a better future.

❥ Baddawi - Leila Abdelrazaq

Baddawi is the story of a young boy named Ahmad struggling to find his place in the world. Raised in a refugee camp called Baddawi in northern Lebanon, Ahmad is just one of the thousands of Palestinians who fled their homeland after the Nakba of 1948 established the state of Israel.

❥ Wild Thorns - Sahar Khalifeh

A young Palestinian named Usama returns from working in the Gulf to support the resistance movement. His mission is to blow up buses transporting Palestinian workers into Israel. Shocked to discover that many of his fellow citizens have adjusted to life under military rule, Usama exchanges harsh words with his friends and family. Despite uncertainty, he sets out to accomplish his mission … with disastrous consequences.

Wild Thorns features unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, its deep sincerity, uncompromising honesty and rich emotional core plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.

This novel is considered one of the first to explore daily life under the violent Israeli occupation.

❥ Time of White Horses - Ibrahim Nasrallah

Spanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948.

Through the lives of Mahmud, elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled’s grandson Naji, we enter the life of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another. Khaled’s remarkable white mare, Hamama, and her descendants feel and share the family’s struggles and as a siege grips Hadiya, it falls to Khaled to save his people from a descending tyranny.

non-fiction

❥ The Question of Palestine - Edward Said

Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied—as well as in the conscience of the West. The book renders a timeline of events in Palestine as well as the Middle East with precision.

an important read, as most edward said books are

❥ I Saw Ramallah - Mourid Barghouti

An autobiography of a poet who recounts his decision to leave his country in 1966 to pursue his studies before trying to return to Palestine only to find out that he had been exiled. He was a Palestine a while ago and now he is a refugee with no home to go to. He then starts a 30-year struggle to get a permit to visit to Ramallah, his homeland. Barghouti writes from a place of exile and displacement, highlighting the struggle many palestinians like himself faced in their relationship with home and belonging.

❥ The Hundred Years' War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians told through pivotal events and family history. A deeply insightful and thought-provoking read.

❥ The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé

Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.

A deeply honest and empathetic account of the atrocities carried out upon the people of Palestine. Pappé challenges colonialism and racism using in-depth research and critical analysis. Must read.

❥ Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood - Ibtisam Barakat

A memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. This book captures what it’s like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home.

❥ From the River to the Sea: Essay for a Free Palestine - multiple writers

From the River to the Sea collects personal testimonies from within Gaza and the West Bank, along with essays and interviews that collectively provide crucial histories and analyses to help us understand how we got to the nightmarish present. They place Israel’s genocidal campaign within the longer history of settler colonialism in Palestine, and Hamas within the longer histories of Palestinian resistance and the so-called “peace process.” Taken together, the essays comprising this collection provide important grounding for the urgent discussions taking place across the Palestine solidarity movement.

download the e-book for free

❥ Once Upon a Country - Sari Nusseibeh

A memoir that gives a rare view into what the occupation of Palestine has meant for one Palestinian family over the generations. Nusseibeh also interweaves his own story with that of the Palestinians as a people.

❥ I was Born Here, I Was Born There - Mourid Barghouti

In a series of grim, emotive essays set in the occupied territories of Israel, the long exiled Jordanian Palestinian poet recounts his return with his grown son and delineates the terrible changes he witnessed in the villages of his childhood and within his own family.

❥ They Called Me A Lioness - Ahed Tamimi

A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir.

This is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the human-scale story of an occupation that has riveted the world and shaped global politics, from a girl who grew up in the middle of it.

❥ Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village - Jody Sokolower

Silwan is a Palestinian village located just outside the ancient walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village is a moving story of a village and its people. As Silwani youth and community members share their lives with us, their village becomes an easily accessible way to understand Palestinian history and current reality.

❥ Children of Bethany: The Story of a Palestinian Family - Said K. Aburish

The story of the family of Khalil Aburish, (d.1936), a flamboyant headsman in the little village of Bethany, just outside Jerusalem—his wife, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is the story of a family torn apart by events in Palestine in this century.

❥ Palestinian Walks - Raja Shehadeh

The reader accompanies Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, his love for this magical place saturating the renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build israeli settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. In this book, Raja Shehadeh's elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.

❥ When the Birds Stopped Singing - Raja Shehadeh

A chronicle of life as lived by ordinary Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza during the horrible destruction and situation during the 2002 Israeli invasion. This is an account of what it is like to be under the terror, the frustrations, the humiliations, and the rage. How do you pass your time when you are imprisoned in your own home? What do you do when you cannot cross the neighborhood to help your sick mother? The book serves as a window to understanding what life is like for the average Palestinian civilian under Israeli occupation and cruelty.

❥ All That Remains - Walid Khalidi

This book describes in detail the more than 400 Palestinian villages that were destroyed or depopulated by Israel in 1948. These once-thriving communities not only have been erased from the Palestinian landscape, their very names have been removed from contemporary Israeli maps. But to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in their diaspora, these villages were home, and continue to be poignantly powerful symbols of their personal and national identity.

Poetry

❥ The Butterfly’s Burden - Mahmoud Darwish

A compilation of three books by renowned arab poet Mahmoud Darwish that touch upon the life and horrors in Ramallah, love, and a longing for a Palestine before the occupation. It’s just a compilation of the most beautiful and lyrical poetry with thought provoking themes and ideas embedded all the way through.

fun fact! MD is known for writing love poetry when speaking of his country as if he was speaking to a lover. at first glance it sounds like the poem is simply about love but when you look deeper, you realise he has personified his homeland and is professing his undying love and devotion to it.

❥ Poems of Palestine - multiple writers, curated by Fady Joudah & Lena Tuffaha

this is an online compilation of various poems written by various palestinian poets

❥ Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear - Mosab Abu Toha

A collection of poems that emerge directly from living one’s entire life in Gaza, making a life for one’s family and raising a family in constant lockdown, and oftentimes directly under attack.

the title poem is one of the most beautiful yet soul-crushing poems i’ve read.

more poems include lines like: “borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets”

❥ Light in Gaza - Refaat Alareer, Mosab Abu Toha & Jehad Abusalim

Imagining a future in Gaza beyond the cruelties of Apartheid and occupation, this anthology touches on understanding the Palestinian experience. The book explores what the future of Gaza could be, and it’s critical role in the Palestinian identity, history and struggle for liberation

you can download the book for free here

❥ Rifqa - Mohammed El-Kurd

This book touches upon the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem. The book is named after the author’s grandmother, who had fled from Haifa during the Nakba of 1948. The book explores how the current takeovers and occupation are merely a continuation of Al-Nakba; a legalised, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.

❥ Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. - Noor Hindi

With rich intertextuality and an unwavering eye, Noor Hindi explores and interrogates colonialism, religion, patriarchy, and the complex intersections of her identity.

❥ Unfortunately, It Was Paradise - Mahmoud Darwish

A collection of some of the most famous poems of ‘Palestine’s Poet’, Mahmoud Darwish. Worked on by a team of translators in collaboration with the poet himself, which capture his distinctive voice and spirit.

❥ Poems by Fadwa Tuqan

Poems by one of the most famous Palestinian poets known for her representations of resistance to Israeli occupation in contemporary Arab poetry.

(can’t find a book so you’re gonna just have to google them. they’re definitely worth the read though!)

❥ … in the genocide - Omar Sakr

a collection of poems by arab-australian poet omar sakr on the current genocide of the palestinians in gaza. omar is not palestinian but he’s written beautiful poems about palestine. definitely worth a read.

these books are a wonderful way for you to educate yourself on the palestinian identity, their history, their voices and their stories. instead of hearing about the palestinians from the media, why not read what they say from their own hearts? understand them in their purest form.

you may find these books online or your local bookstore.

happy reading! 💛