Review – Books

"The rain was not in a docile mood." Huzama Habayeb's opening sentence of her novel Velvet (Hoopoe Fiction, 2019), beckons the reader to delve into intertwining worlds: the extravagance...

One would be at stretch to find another place on earth where the mining of history evokes as much controversy as Palestine. You would struggle even further to name...

It is currently olive harvest season in Palestine, which makes it the perfect time to talk about Yasmin Khan’s book Zaitoun, which translates to 'olive' in Arabic

For decades, Palestine has been framed by international law. This convenient perspective, rendered mainstream by the international community and the Palestinian Authority, has made international law a weapon to...

From the late sixties up until the early eighties Palestinians formed a resistance movement to liberate their homeland and ensure the return of their refugees. A vital part of...

Gardner Thompson's book, Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel (Saqi Books, 2019) opens with a brief observation that contradicts all mainstream propaganda which spouts the...

When discussing the Palestinian cause from the Nakba to the Great March of Return, many things spring to mind: the phenomenon of Zionism and its gradual takeover of Palestine;...

"Baris." He sighed. "It is where my life is." So Faruq Al-Azmeh, the "one other Arab on board the ship to Marseille", told an impressionable Midhat Kamal as he...

Literature about Palestine by Palestinian authors is like a deluge of insights into what is missing from what we proclaim to know. Our knowledge is dominated by news reports...

The Sacking of Fallujah: A People's History by Ross Caputi, Richard Hil and Donna Mulhearn makes for chilling reading as it takes us inside the three sieges that the...

The colonisation of Palestinian landscape and minds, author Greg Burris argues, is imbued with spaces in what he terms "the radical imagination" that breaks through Israeli impositions. Film and...

Palestinian memory has become synonymous with the 1948 Nakba and Palestinian resistance. Yet there are other strands of memory which are overlooked. Farah Aboubakr's treatise "The Folktales of Palestine"...

Nakba-themed anthologies dispel the concept of linear time and chronology. The brutal and abrupt halting of pre-1948 Palestinian life remains a reference point in Palestinian history, memory and literature,...

In these times of a growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement regarding the apartheid state of Israel, public opinion is finally changing, even if those in the large...

In The Book of Disappearance, Palestinian novelist Ibtisam Azem has crafted a masterpiece which immediately leads the reader to ponder the historical foundations of the 1948 Nakba, as well...

No matter how prevalent refugee stories have become in the media, the dissociation between the terminology and the people keeps growing. Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson address this absence...

It is not usual to begin a book review with a quote from elsewhere, but, "Bad men need nothing more to compress their ends, than that good men should...

Those familiar with the ever-twisting gyrations of the Zionist project know that it was not just one of bully-boy bigotry but of employment leverage and advantage. Early on, the...

The international community, through the Oslo Accords, has created an intricate web of terminology that points towards a permanently stalled state-building process. In their book, The Palestinian Authority in...

An unfulfilled desire has no sanctuary other than remembrance. Radwa Ashour's novel, The Woman from Tantoura (Hoopoe Fiction, 2019), explores the ramifications of memory and how its story is...

Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat whose personal experience of Palestine opened up the possibility of rethinking through Palestinian narratives, clarifies the role of diplomacy in the preface to...

Some years ago, I met a landlord briefly who was an Iraqi. After volunteering to tell me his land of origin, he began to explain his theory that ISIS...

As voices continue to emerge within the tradition of Anglo-Arab fictions, one constant within these narratives is the conversation surrounding the negotiation of identities between one's traditional culture vis-à-vis...

In today's twisted, double-speak in political accusation, some principles stay upheld.  Ronit Lentin, the Trinity College Dublin sociologist, has long specialised in race relations and this book excavates Israel's...

This collection of well-researched essays provides an insight into the dynamics of how neoliberalism is woven within the Zionist colonial process and how it has created two opposing camps,...

"When ISIS soldiers arrest me and kill me, it will be okay, because while they will cut off my head, I'll still have dignity, which is better than living...

Review rating: 4/5 Fredrik Meiton approaches the Zionist colonisation of Palestine from an industrialisation angle in his book "Electrical Palestine. Capital and technology from Empire to Nation" (University of...

Review Rating 4/5 Seraj Assi's study on nomadism sheds light on previously obscured understandings which have contributed to the Bedouin being discussed from a colonial context. The History and...

Tim Marshall served a long stint as diplomatic editor of Britain's Sky News. In his book "Prisoners of Geography", he argues that topography imprisons leaders. "This was true of...

At first glance, "Towards a Westphalia for the Middle East" seems to the reader to mirror countless other books on the region's history. By comparing current conflicts to wars...

Review Rating: 4/5 The elimination of the Palestinian narrative from mainstream media is not a new phenomenon. Peter Manning's study, Representing Palestine. Media and Journalism in Australia since World...

The speech given by Winston Churchill in March 1946 at the Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, is remembered mostly by his coining of the term "Iron Curtain". However, he...