Shehadeh, Raja – The Bell Bookshop

Forgotten

Emma — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Shehadeh’s books are like beacons held up against the darkness” Observer”A heartbreaking, hopeful look at how Palestinian culture endures” Irish Times Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine – now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories – and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.From ancient city ruins to the Nabi ‘Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased – and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba – the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians – but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.

Forgotten

Emma — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine – now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories – and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.From ancient city ruins to the Nabi ‘Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased – and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba – the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians – but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.

What does Israel fear from Palestine?

Emma — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When the state of Israel was formed in 1948, it precipitated the Nakba or ‘disaster’: the displacement of the Palestine nation, creating fracture-lines which continue to erupt in violent and tragic ways today.In the years that followed, while the Berlin Wall crumbled and South Africa abolished apartheid, the Israeli government rejected every opportunity for reconciliation with Palestine. But Raja Shehadeh, human rights lawyer and Palestine’s greatest living writer, suggests that this does not mean the two nations cannot work together as partners on the road to peace, not genocide. In graceful, devastatingly observed prose, this is a fresh perspective for a time of great need.