Across memoir, fiction, and political commentary, this reading list gives us the language we need to talk about Palestine today.
At a moment when conversations about Palestine feel urgent and often fractured, reading offers a way to recentre understanding. These books place Palestine in the historical, the personal, and the revolutionary—10 selections of memoir, fiction, and political commentary that give us the language we need to talk about Palestine today...
‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine’, Rachid Khalidi
‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine’ is a necessary read. Rachid Khalidi provides us with a comprehensive history of Palestinian history from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through Israeli assaults against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza up to 2017. It is the winner of the 2020 Palestine Book Award.
‘Daybreak In Gaza’, Edited by Mahmoud Muna & Matthew Teller
‘Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture’ edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller, with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abusafia, is a collection of first-person and historical narratives that reveal a side of Gaza often left out of international media.
‘Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal’, Mohammed El-Kurd
In ‘Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal’, Mohammed El‑Kurd prolifically critiques how Palestinians are expected to perform “perfect victimhood” in global discourse and media.
'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’, Omar El-Akkad
‘One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This’ by Omar El Akkad is a nonfiction moral grappling with Western liberalism, exile and what happens when “everyone will always have been against” the genocide in Gaza.
‘Men in the Sun’, Ghassan Kanafani
Ghassan Kanafani’s classic ‘Men in the Sun’ is a tragic allegory of three Palestinian men made refugees by the 1948 Nakba who risk it all in hopes of escaping exile, making the treacherous journey across the Iraqi desert to find work in Kuwait. It was adapted into a 1973 Syrian film titled 'The Dupes'.
‘Salt Houses’, Hala Alyan
‘Salt Houses’ by Hala Alyan is a novel that follows four generations of a Palestinian family across exile and diaspora between 1963 and 2014, covering the family’s story through historical milestones like the Six Day War in 1967 to the Second Intifada to 9/11.
'Mornings in Jenin’, Susan Abulhawa
In another novel that covers a multi-generational family story, ‘Mornings in Jenin’ by Susan Abulhawa follows one Palestinian family’s dispossession and survival from 1948 onwards, now a modern classic of Palestinian literature.
'The Called Me A Lioness’, Ahed Tamimi and Dena Takruri
‘They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom’ is Ahed Tamimi’s memoir written by Palestinian-American journalist Dena Takruri—a fearless activist who did not let her imprisonment by Israeli forces at 16 years old stop her from speaking out against occupation.
‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement’, Angela Y. Davis
‘Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement’ by Angela Y. Davis, the world-renowned activist and philosopher, is a collection of her essays and speeches linking struggles for justice in the US and Palestine, arguing for global solidarity and the foundations of modern movements.
‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy’, Nathan Thrall
Nathan Thrall’s Pulitzer-Prize winner ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy’ is a deeply personal nonfiction exploration of one Palestinian father’s loss, exposing the structural violence of Israeli occupation.
