Search results for ""Author Raja Shehadeh""

Winner of the Moore Prize 2020 In Going Home, Orwell Prize winning author Raja Shehadeh travels Ramallah and records the changing face of the city. Walking along the streets he grew up in, he tells the stories of the people, the relationships, the houses, and the businesses that were and now are cornerstones of the city and his community. This is, in many ways, an elegy. Green spaces - gardens and hills crowned with olive trees - have been replaced by tower blocks and concrete lots; the occupation and the settlements have further entrenched themselves in every aspect of movement-from the roads that can and cannot be used to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent people leaving the West Bank. The culture of the city has also shifted with Islam taking a more prominent role in people's everyday and political lives and the geography of the city. As he grapples with ageing and the failures of the resistance, Shehadeh notes the ways that the past still invades the presence from the ruins of the compound that was Yasser Arafat's home to the power of emigrated families to reshape neighbourhoods by selling their long-abandoned homes. This is perhaps Raja Shehadeh's most painfully visceral book.

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As a young boy, Raja Shehadeh was entranced by a forbidden Israeli postage stamp in his uncle's album, intrigued by tales of a green land beyond the border.He couldn't have known then what Israel would come to mean to him, or to foresee the future occupation of his home in Palestine. Later, as a young lawyer, he worked to halt land seizures and towards peace and justice in the region. During this time, he made close friends with several young Jewish Israelis, including fellow thinker and searcher Henry. But as life became increasingly unbearable under in the Palestinian territories, it was impossible to escape politics or the past, and even the strongest friendships and hopes were put to the test. Brave, intelligent and deeply controversial, in this book award-winning author Raja Shehadeh explores the devastating effect of occupation on even the most intimate aspects of life. Looking back over decades of political turmoil, he traces the impact on the fragile bonds of friendship across the Israel-Palestine border, and asks whether those considered bitter enemies can come together to forge a common future.

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Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself. In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile - of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.

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It is often the smallest details of daily life that tell us the most. And so it is under occupation in Palestine. What most of us take for granted has to be carefully thought about and planned for: When will the post be allowed to get through? Will there be enough water for the bath tonight? How shall I get rid of the rubbish collecting outside? How much time should I allow for the journey to visit my cousin, going through checkpoints? And big questions too: Is working with left-wing Israelis collaborating or not? What affect will the Arab Spring have on the future of Palestine? What can anyone do to bring about change? Are any of life's pleasures untouched by politics?

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FINALIST FOR THE US NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2023 FOR NONFICTION Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably. This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

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'Palestine's greatest prose writer' Observer'Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise' Colm TóibínBattered by repeated suicide bombs, the Israeli army invaded Palestine in April 2002 and held many of the principal towns, including Ramallah, under siege. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; there were Israeli soldiers on the rooftops; his mother was sick, and he couldn't cross town to help her.Shehadeh - winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize and a finalist for the 2023 National Book Awards - kept a diary. This is an account of what it is like to be under siege: the terror, the frustrations, as well as the moments of poignant relief and reflection on the profound crisis gripping both Palestine and Israel.

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A poignant, incisive meditation on Israel’s longstanding rejection of peace, and what the war on Gaza means for Palestinian and Israeli futures.When apartheid in South Africa ended in 1994, dismantled by internal activism and global pressure, why did Israel continue to pursue its own apartheid policies against Palestinians? In keeping with a history of antagonism, the Israeli state accelerated the establishment of settlements in the Occupied Territories as extreme right-wing voices gained prominence in government, with comparatively little international backlash.Condensing this complex history into a lucid essay, Raja Shehadeh examines the many lost opportunities to promote a lasting peace and equality between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, each side’s perception of events has strongly diverged. What can this discrepancy tell us about Israel’s undermining of a

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Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land. Six walks span a period of twenty-six years, in the hills around Ramallah, in the Jerusalem wilderness and through the ravines by the Dead Sea. Each walk takes place at a different stage of Palestinian history since 1982, the first in the empty pristine hills and the last amongst the settlements and the wall. The reader senses the changing political atmosphere as well as the physical transformation of the landscape. By recording how the land felt and looked before these calamities, Raja Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that many Palestinians will never know.

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A FINALIST FOR THE US NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2023 FOR NONFICTION 'Profoundly personal as well as historically significant ... In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi' Hisham Matar, New York Times Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably. This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

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