Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
Palestine

Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative

by Isabella Hammad

Freedom & Resistance Non-Fiction Political Writing 2024

Summary

Who gets to tell a people’s story—and what happens when the world refuses to listen? In this powerful essay, Isabella Hammad examines how narratives shape our understanding of Palestine, political violence, and the struggle for freedom. Drawing on the work of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, she explores how literature can challenge dominant perspectives, complicate simplistic political narratives, and make space for experiences that are too often overlooked. The book brings together Hammad’s 2023 Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University and a subsequent afterword written in early 2024, reflecting on the war in Gaza and the urgent struggle over how it is represented. A thoughtful meditation on storytelling, power, and moral responsibility, it asks readers to reconsider not only the stories they hear, but also the voices they may have learned not to recognize.

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Country
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Asia
About the author
Isabella Hammad
Isabella Hammad

Isabella Hammad is a British-Palestinian novelist whose work explores history, displacement, identity, and the complexities of Palestinian life. Born in London to a Palestinian father and a British mother, she studied English literature at Oxford University before earning an MFA from New York University. Her debut novel, The Parisian (2019), follows a Palestinian man navigating the political and cultural transformations of the early twentieth century. The book won the Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, Enter Ghost (2023), received the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Hammad has also received prestigious literary fellowships and was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Paris Review and The New York Times.

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Details
Published
2024
Author
Isabella Hammad