literature
The Whistling of Places: A Short Text by Raji Bathish
Raji Bathish is a (relatively) young experimental Palestinian author from Nazareth who writes texts that blur the boundary between poetry and prose, and shake the Arab reader out of a naive, stereotypically heroic image of the Palestinian living in occupied Palestine.
For Cultural Purposes Only
Update : You may watch “They Do Not Exist” online here. (Tarboush tip: Laurie King) from Sight and Sound Magazine The Palestinian Film Archive vanished during the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut. Sarah Wood’s ‘For Cultural Purposes Only’ revives the memory of its contents through verbal description and drawings. Palestinian writer Adania Shibli finds her [...]
Animal Farm in Palestine: Bravo to Jenin Freedom Theater
BBC reports that George Orwell’s Animal Farm is being performed in the West Bank with a decidedly Palestinian twist. It is being put on by drama students of the Freedom Theatre is being staged in the Jenin refugee camp. Although the book is a satire of Stalinism, the adaptation for the Jenin stage is controversial. [...]
Tayyeb Saleh Passes Away, Migrating to the North (Arabic)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0M_c5zmPtk] Tayyeb Saleh, the Sudanese novelist and writer passed away yesterday in London. He was nearly 80 years old. He left behind a rich literary collection that has a number of novels, the most famous of which is Season of Migration to the North, which gained fame for being one of the first novels to [...]
Time Itself Learns from My People
The upcoming Palestinian poet, Tamim al-Barghouthi (Mourid’s son) came out last year with a powerfully Mutanabbi-esque poem (especially the way he personifies Time as a warrior that he/his people conquered) that sums up why the Palestinians will never bow: even Time itself learns from them: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogu9j3KaJtk] My spontaneous (poorly prepared, literal) translation of the first [...]
Batter My Heart
Israeli writer Avi Shavit, who is by no means a members of Israel’s polemic peace camp, wrote an article stating that while Israel’s open assault and massacre against Palestinians, while squeezing Hamas, is destroying Israels’ soul. Which reminded me of John Donne’s sonnet, which I offer to Israelis as my contribution the this debate, should [...]
John Berger reads Ghassan Kanafani
We are now spectators of the latest – and perhaps penultimate – chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other. Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential [...]
Letter from Gaza (1956), by Ghassan Kanafani
Dear Mustafa, I have now received your letter, in which you tell me that you’ve done everything necessary to enable me to stay with you in Sacramento. I’ve also received news that I have been accepted in the department of Civil Engineering in the University of California. I must thank you for everything, my friend. [...]
Alaa Hlehel: A Nightmare Called Ramadan
Alaa Hlehel is one of the up and coming young Palestinian writers from inside Israel/Occupied Palestine, whom I had the opportunity to meet in Cairo this past May. He is also a journalist, founder-administrator of the Arabs48 website and until recently, the editor-in-chief of Fasl al-Maqal, the newspaper of (Azmi Bishara’s) Balad party, which calls [...]
Young Palestinian Writers in Cairoٌ
I just attended a really cool talk the other day as part of the Spring Festival that gathered three young writers from Palestine, two of them Israeli Palestinians and one from Ramallah. They read short pieces from their poetry/short stories and then had a an articulate and charged discussion on the current generation of Palestinian [...]
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