Books from Palestine

In the ancient streets of Jerusalem, Fatima receives an unexpected phone call that awakens memories she has spent years trying to bury. Thousands of miles away in the English countryside, Layla discovers a family heirloom hidden beneath her attic floor, setting her on a journey into the painful, long-silenced history of Palestine. As the two women’s stories begin to converge, family secrets reveal the enduring consequences of displacement and the fragile threads connecting generations to their homeland. Inspired by the author’s own discovery of her family’s history during a BBC documentary, Yassini Girls is a deeply personal novel about Palestinian identity, inherited trauma, and the power of storytelling to preserve what history threatens to erase. Through the traditions, memories, and resilience of Palestinian women, it explores how understanding the past can become an act of resistance and a way of safeguarding the future.

In British-ruled Palestine, a charismatic young man named Tareq becomes a figure of mystery and resistance. After leaving school, he travels from village to village as a magician, performing astonishing feats that earn him a devoted following. But beneath his extraordinary reputation lies a growing defiance of British colonial authority. As unrest spreads across Palestine and the 1936 Arab Revolt approaches, Tareq’s influence attracts the attention of Challis, a ruthless British police chief determined to crush the resistance. Decades later, amid the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an English missionary recalls the young man whose fate became intertwined with the history of a nation. Rich in historical detail and vivid depictions of Palestinian society before the Nakba, The Lord explores resistance, colonial power, and the lives of people caught in the struggle for their homeland.

When Intisar Jaber receives news that her estranged father is dying, she leaves her life in Chicago behind and returns to Palestine, a land she barely remembers but has never entirely escaped. Her father, Hafez, abandoned her family decades earlier to join the resistance, only to spend the rest of his life imprisoned. Now, standing in her ancestral village, Intisar must confront the complicated legacy he left behind and the unfamiliar feeling of being a stranger in her own homeland. Meanwhile, her grandmother Sundus fights to protect the family home from those seeking to take it away. As the two women navigate grief, fractured family ties, and the enduring struggle to preserve their inheritance, Intisar faces a difficult choice between the life she has built in America and the history calling her back. The Slightest Green is a moving multigenerational novel about Palestinian identity, displacement, and the powerful connection between people and the land they call home.