Forgotten (searching For Palestine’s Hidden Places And Lost Memorials)

By (author) Shehadeh Raja; By (author) Johnson, Penny
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From two leading writers and thinkers on Palestine: a profound meditation on memory and what we choose to memorialise
Description:
"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.
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Shehadeh is engaged, forensic, alert to history''s weight but unwilling to let it crush him... Shehadeh''s books are like beacons held up against the darkness of Israeli oppression. Forgotten is perhaps the brightest light of all
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Again and again, I thought of WG Sebald as I read Forgotten. The resemblance lies not only in the mournful elegance of the prose but also in its method: a meditative excavation of history embedded in the landscape
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A heartbreaking, hopeful look at how Palestinian culture endures in spite of the occupation
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Slim but profound
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An illuminating and poignant journey through Palestine''s past and present...a tender and undeterred love letter to a contested land
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A valuable record of Palestine, as told by two eloquent and erudite observers
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An inspiring account... insightful
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Thought-provoking and uplifting, written with such appreciation for Palestinian history and culture, such love of nature and such concern for the environment. While Forgotten works as an entity, each chapter can be read as self-standing reflections on the search for Palestine''s hidden places and monuments
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This precious jewel of a book is a call to preserve the past in order to secure the future. Its hauntingly evocative prose stays with you long after its final pages have been turned
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The authors have a profound and subtle understanding of history [and] remind us of the astonishing heritage of this sliver of land... Shehadeh''s political and historical analysis is sharp and unsentimental... A really beautiful book
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Praise for Rajah Shehadeh: In his moral clarity and baring of the heart ... Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi
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A buoy in a sea of bleakness
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Palestine''s greatest prose writer
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Profoundly personal as well as historically significant ... A quiet and deeply felt book
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Insightful, surprising, and moving
Biographical note:
Raja Shehadeh is Palestine''s leading writer. A lawyer and human rights activist, he is the author of the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks. Penny Johnson is a founding member of the Institute of Women''s Studies at Birzeit University, a Contributing Editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly and author of Companions