Books To Read by Palestinian Authors

Celebrate the diverse cuisine of Palestine with more than 100 plant-based and vegetarian recipes for festive meals, breads, desserts, and more, from the award-winning co-author of Jerusalem, Falastin, and co-founder of Ottolenghi. Boustany — translates from Arabic as “my garden” — is filled with vibrant and lively photographs of everyday meals that invite you into Sami’s home. With recipes for dinner parties, fermenting your own vegetables, and more, Sami shares the cultural fabric of Palestine through his eyes.

Set in Jaffa between 1947 and 1951, this “fable-like historical novel of young love … darkly humorous and touching” (Oprah Daily) is based on a true story during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and the displacement of its people.

Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East — from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine — Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings — for love, and a place to call home.

A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman’s unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.

Edward W. Said’s writings have transformed the field of literary studies. In this bracing collection of essays, one of the most beloved and respected public intellectuals of our time examines culture, the literary canon, and the ever-shifting terrain of history. In the title essay, the widely admired “Reflections on Exile,” he weighs his own estrangement with his home country and the fate of the Palestinian people. “What could be more intransigent than the conflict between Zionist Jews and Arab Palestinians?” Said asks. “Palestinians feel that they have been turned into exiles by the proverbial people of exile.” The culmination of 35 years of scholarship, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays is an invigorating and life-affirming achievement, a work of intellectual, emotional, and moral rigor.

A subtle psychological portrait of the author’s relationship with his father during the 20th-century battle for Palestinian human rights. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz Shehadeh resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognize his father’s courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja’s own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably. This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last half century, his work evokes the loss of his homeland and is suffused with the pain of dispossession and exile. His poems display a brilliant acuity, a passion for and openness to the world and, above all, a deep and abiding humanity.

A luminous, inventive, and deeply personal exploration of living in the liminal space between Jewish and Arab, ancient and modern, by a gifted Palestinian writer. Shammas’s tour de force is both a personal and political narrative — a reinvention of the novel as a way of envisioning and responding to historical and cultural legacies and conflicts.