Palestine in Fiction: Palestinian Authors

Thirteen-year-old Hayaat of Bethlehem faces check points, curfews, and the travel permit system designed to keep people on the West Bank when she attempts to go to her grandmother's ancestral home in Jerusalem with her best friend.

Spans a century of poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, and essays by Sait Faik Abasiyanik, Azra Abbas, Ghulam Abbas, Abu Salma, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Sa'id Asbar), Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Pegah Ahmadi, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Nazik al-Malāʼikah, Mozaffar al-Nawwab, Melih Cevdet Anday, ʻArrār (Mustafa Wahbi al-Tal), Manouchehr Atashi, Reza Baraheni, Faraj Bayraqdar, Simin Behbahani, Alireza Behnam, Sadeq Chubak, Ismat Chughtai, Zayd Mutee' Dammaj, Simin Daneshvar,...

Three generations of Palestinian-American women in contemporary Brooklyn are torn by individual desire, educational ambitions, a devastating tragedy, and the strict mores of traditional Arab culture.

"Raised in a conservative and emotionally volatile Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur who took her to the suburbs. She's gotten to follow her dreams, completing an undergraduate degree in art and landing a good job at the local college. As a traditional wife, she also raises their two school-aged daughters, takes care of the house, and has dinner ready when her husband...

"A Palestinian family celebrates the stories of their homeland in this moving autobiographical picture book debut by Hannah Moushabeck. With heartfelt illustrations by Reem Madooh, Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine is a love letter to home, to family, and to the persisting hope of people, which transcends borders"--

"Reem Kassis is a bestselling writer and cookbook author. Her cookbook The Palestinian Table (Phaidon, 2017) won The Guild of Food Writers Award, was one of NPR's Best Books, and was nominated for a James Beard Award. We Are Palestinian is an attractive, full-color, hardback picture book with gloss lamination finish. Chapters include: Geography, Cultural Symbols, Creative Minds, Agriculture, Cuisine, Performing Arts, History and Religion. The perfect...

"A bold, evocative new novel from the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 and Betty Trask Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet. After years away from her family's homeland, and healing from an affair with an established director, stage actress Sonia Nasir returns to Palestine to visit her older sister Haneen. Though the siblings grew up spending summers...

Palestine, 1941. In the small village of Ein Hod, a father leads a procession of his family and workers through the olive groves. As they move through the trees, the green fruits drop onto the orchard floor; the ancient cycle of the seasons providing another bountiful harvest. 1948. The Abulheja family are forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Ein Hod and sent to live in a refugee camp in Jenin. Through Amal, the bright granddaughter of the...

"On a hot day in Bethlehem, a twelve-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: 'You exist too much, ' she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes...

Omar is accustomed to dodging surveillance bullets to cross the separation wall to visit his secret love Nadia. But occupied Palestine knows neither simple love nor clear-cut war. When Omar is captured after a deadly act of resistance, he falls into a cat-and-mouse game with the military police. Suspicion and betrayal jeopardize his longtime trust with his childhood friends, but it's soon evident that everything he does is for his love of Nadia.