Ghada Karmi

Palestine

About

Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian-British physician, academic, writer, and political commentator born in Jerusalem in 1939. Her family was forced to leave Palestine during the Nakba in 1948, eventually settling in England, where she grew up and pursued her education. She studied medicine at the University of Bristol and later earned a doctorate in the history of Arabic medicine from the University of London. After practising as a doctor, specialising in the health of migrants and refugees, she became an influential scholar of Middle Eastern politics and Palestinian history. Her work explores displacement, exile, identity, and the enduring consequences of the loss of homeland. Her acclaimed memoir In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story (2002) recounts her childhood in Jerusalem and her experience of growing up in Britain. Other notable works include Return: A Palestinian Memoir (2015) and One State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel (2023).

Books on TheBookRoads

All genres Historical Fiction Non-Fiction Memoir

All themes Love & Passion Identity & Belonging

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Murjana

Baghdad, 830 CE: a city of dazzling scholarship, artistic brilliance, and dangerous political divisions. When the Abbasid caliph falls gravely ill, his physician discovers that the cause is an overwhelming passion for Murjana, a beautiful young woman from a Shia family. Their marriage promises to unite two hearts, but threatens to ignite conflict in a society divided by religious loyalties and competing ambitions. As palace intrigue, jealousy, and vengeance gather around the couple, Ghada Karmi brings medieval Baghdad to life in a richly imagined historical novel about forbidden love and the destructive power of sectarian hatred. Inspired by the intellectual and cultural world of the Abbasid era, Murjana asks whether love can overcome the divisions that history keeps creating.

Return: A Palestinian Memoir

Return: A Palestinian Memoir

What happens when you finally return to the homeland you were forced to leave as a child—and discover that it no longer feels like home? More than fifty years after her family fled Jerusalem during the 1948 Nakba, Palestinian-British doctor and writer Ghada Karmi returns to Palestine, hoping to contribute to the struggle for peace and Palestinian statehood. Working with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, she encounters the realities of occupation, military restrictions, political bureaucracy, and a homeland transformed beyond recognition. As she revisits places connected to her childhood and confronts the loss of her family home, Karmi wrestles with a deeply personal question: can exile ever truly end? An intimate memoir of displacement and belonging, Return explores the painful distance between the homeland preserved in memory and the reality of returning to it.

In Search of Fatima

In Search of Fatima

What does it mean to lose your homeland—and spend the rest of your life searching for a place to belong? In this moving memoir, Ghada Karmi recounts her childhood in Jerusalem, her family’s forced displacement during the 1948 Nakba, and their eventual resettlement in England. Growing up between two worlds, she struggles with exile, cultural alienation, and the feeling of being a stranger in a country that is supposed to be home. As she reflects on her childhood and later returns to Palestine, Karmi explores the personal consequences of displacement alongside the political history that shaped her life. Both an intimate family story and a powerful account of Palestinian experience, this memoir examines how the loss of a homeland can shape identity across generations.

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