Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kahsua
The theme of dual identity in fiction is no out of the ordinary thing, but Sayed Kashua’s debut novel, Dancing Arabs, is possibly one of the more poignant examples. The main character of this book is totally Palestinian and equally Israeli, Hebrew and Arab, raised in a Palestinian village and being educated in a Jewish School. Dancing Arabs has been praised internationally for its honesty, humour and irony in its portrayal of a young man who by continuously shifting from one identity, one society to the other belongs to none, forever stuck in an emotional no man’s land.

Embers And Ashes: Memoirs Of An Arab Intellectual by Hisham Sharabi
Author of 18 books and numerous articles and editorials, Palestinian Hisham Sharabi is well-respected as a foremost 20th century Arab intellectual, contributing greatly to the study of Arabic culture. Originally published in Arabic, Embers And Ashes, is more than a memoire. It invokes themes such as independence, freedom and modernity. Throughout his long journey, from his college years in Beirut until his death in 2005, Dr. Sharabi was always in exile. These memoirs are both poetic and realistic depicting the struggle of the Arab intellectual with his identity and the loss of his homeland.

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh
Sari Nusseibeh is a Palestinian professor of philosophy and president of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. He has long been viewed as a Palestinian moderate and is an articulate authority on the conflict in the Middle East. Once upon a country, his memoire, is a perfect illustration of the dilemma of the Palestinian democrat.

Memory For Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 by Mahmoud Darwish
In this collection, poet and journalist, interpreter of the exile and hopes of the Palestinian people, Darwish writes of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut. It is one day in the life of a city torn by civil war and invasion. This book is simultaneously a memoir, a prose poem, and a political essay. Darwish is the most widely read Palestinian author of  the 20th century.

The Earth in the Attic by Fady Joudah
The Earth in the Attic, published by Yale University Press, is a collection of poems by Fady Joudah, winner of the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Through his poems, most of them short, he explores the ideas of loss, displacement and longing in a grandeur of conception that is truly beautiful.

Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh
Raja Shehadeh is the son of the first man who called for a two state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is also a passionate hill walker. Living in occupied territory makes for difficult and often dangerous hill walking. Raja takes us on 6 walks f taken between 1978 and 2006. As we walk along we find that the land is gradually carved up by Israeli occupation and the walks more and more limited. There are many ways to tell the story of the Palestine/Israel conflict but Raja Shehadeh’s is perhaps the most engaging.

Gate Of The Sun: Bab Al-Shams by Elias Khoury
Told in the voice of a makeshift doctor, Khalil, talking to a comatose, aging Palestinian fighter, Yunes, Gate Of The Sun is a tapestry of stories. Using a strategy that is in an inversion of "A Thousand and One Nights", as Khalil believes his stories are keeping Yunes alive, Khoury narrates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the 1930s and up to the 1990s. The novel unfolds through Khalil’s memories and offers a humanizing vision of the said conflict, encouraging Palestinians to try and understand the holocaust: "in the faces of those people being driven to slaughter, didn't you see something resembling your own?" in order to see that there’s a part of them in the other.

Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar
Published just a few months after the end of the 1948 war, Khirbet Khizeh, was an immediate success. A Jewish soldier tells of a single day in 1948 when his unit is ordered to attack the Palestinian village of Khirbet Khizeh and expel its inhabitants. This book has been long seen as one of the classics of Israeli literature and was described by a Palestinian journalist as a sign that the Israeli army had a conscience. Khirbet Khizeh is an absolute must for anyone interested in Middle Eastern literature and history.

The Yellow Wind by David Grossman
In 1987 the Israeli novelist David Grossman was commissioned by the Israeli weekly KOTERET RASHIT to write an account of Arabs living beyond the green line. He spent seven weeks travelling the West bank interviewing both Arab and Jewish residents. The Yellow Wind is the product of these seven weeks and appeared in 1987 way before the Arab uprising but it reveals the conditions that were at the base of the uprising. Grossman has said that writing The Yellow Wind changed his life.