Books from Palestine

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.

In A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle, Palestinian writer and human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh explores the connections between family history, national identity, and the changing political landscape of the Middle East. Inspired by the life of his great-uncle Najib Nassar, a Palestinian journalist who lived during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, Shehadeh traces the journey of a man who witnessed the collapse of an empire and the emergence of a new political order. Moving between historical research, personal reflection, and travel writing, the author examines how the experiences of earlier generations continue to shape contemporary Palestinian life. Through his uncle’s story, Shehadeh reflects on the meaning of belonging, the fragility of historical memory, and the ways political borders transform people’s relationships with their homeland. The book offers an intimate exploration of the past, revealing how an individual’s life can illuminate the wider forces that shape a nation’s history and collective identity.

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.

What does it mean to belong to a homeland you may never fully know? In this moving collection of essays, Palestinian-American writer Zaina Arafat explores the complexities of diaspora, inherited memory, and the longing for home. Moving between Nablus, Amman, the Appalachian Mountains, and Manhattan, she weaves together her family’s history, her experiences of identity and motherhood, and the pain of watching Palestine from afar. With tenderness, anger, and sharp insight, Arafat examines what it means to preserve a culture across generations while confronting displacement, erasure, and the shifting meaning of belonging. Our Arab is both an intimate family portrait and a powerful meditation on what it means to be Palestinian today.

Raised in a Palestinian Christian family in San Francisco, Elena Dudum grows up surrounded by her father’s stories of a homeland her grandparents were forced to leave. For years, she resists this inheritance, trying to fit into American life and escape the weight of a history she struggles to claim. But a visit to Palestine brings the realities of occupation, displacement, and her family’s past into sharp focus. Weaving together family memories, archival discoveries, and political reflection, this intimate memoir traces one woman’s journey from estrangement to belonging—and her determination to reclaim a heritage that cannot be erased.