Forgotten

“An illuminating and poignant journey through Palestine’s past and present…a tender and undeterred love letter to a contested land.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Shehadeh…has long been a voice of sanity and measure in the fraught, tendentious world of Arab-Israeli politics…engaged, forensic, alert to history’s weight but unwilling to let it crush him…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…Shehadeh’s books are like beacons held up against the darkness of Israeli oppression. Forgotten is perhaps the brightest light of all.” —The Observer

“A heartbreaking, hopeful look at how Palestinian culture endures in spite of the occupation and the Israeli government’s attempts to remove all traces of it from the land that they ‘share unequally.’” —Irish Times

“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.” —Middle East Eye

“Part travelogue, part historical recounting, the slim but profound book follows Shehadeh and Johnson…as they venture out from their home in Ramallah, in the West Bank…The argument that the erasure of Palestinian villages and historical sites is an attempt to divorce Palestinians from both their cultural memory and their historical connection to the land is not a new one. Shehadeh and Johnson’s search, however, manages to show, rather than tell, just how effective that erasure has been.” —New Statesman

“An elegiac journey…in seeking some of Palestine’s most unusual, unknown, and uncared-for sites, [Shehadeh and Johnson] provide a fresh account of a land described by so many others…a valuable record of Palestine, as told by two eloquent and erudite observers.” —Markaz Review

“Heart-crushing…Yet there are moments of joyous resistance…Reflective and informative.” —Booklist

Praise for Raja Shehadeh:

“Palestine’s greatest prose writer.” —The Observer

“Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy, and wise.” —Colm Tóibín

“Raja Shehadeh is a buoy in a sea of bleakness.” —Rachel Kushner