Their voices come from Bethlehem and Hebron. You can hear them from Jerusalem to Nazareth, and witness their protests in Gaza and Ramallah. From the refugee camps in the West Bank, you can hear the voices of the Palestinian people call out to demand self-determination and a better quality of life. But outside of Israel and the occupied territories, these individual voices are rarely heard-until now.

In Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path through Palestine, internationally renowned feminist critic and writer Bidisha collects the testimonies of an occupied people-ordinary citizens, activists, and children-alongside those of international aid workers and foreign visitors for a revelatory look at a population on the margins.

Called “beautifully belligerent, [and] fiercely intelligent” by The Independent and a “dazzlingly creative writer” by the London Times, Bidisha amplifies the voices of the Palestinian people in this book and lends them her own considerable strength. ]]> https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-future-of-serious-art/ Thu, 12 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-future-of-serious-art/  series, journalist and broadcaster Bidisha uses her personal journey though books, TV and film to trace seismic changes in the way we engage with culture, and what we consider to be serious art]]> Where and who do we want to be? How might we get there? What might happen if we stay on our current course?

In The Future of Serious Art, Bidisha uses her personal journey through novels, TV and film to mirror the seismic changes that have occurred in culture and its industries in recent years.

The digital revolution has brought all of TV, cinema and music into the palms of our hands. It’s easier than ever to bring stories to life, but what happens when artistic work is rebranded as ‘content creation’? Where does this leave literary novelists and arthouse filmmakers? What about those auteur-directors who make mainstream but thoughtful films for the big screen?  

As a storyteller herself, and a woman of colour who isn’t a millennial, Bidisha asks who is taken seriously as an artist, what is taken seriously as art now and how that might change over the next century.

This brief but mighty book is one of five that comprise the first set of FUTURES essays. Each standalone book presents the author’s original vision of a singular aspect of the future which inspires in them hope or reticence, optimism or fear. Read individually, these essays will inform, entertain and challenge. Together, they form a picture of what might lie ahead, and ask the reader to imagine how we might make the transition from here to there, from now to then.