Palestine has been in the news for as long as anyone can remember. The latest episode returned the region and the issue to the fore. But while media coverage and academic scholarship on Palestine has been intermittent and determined by politics and ideology, as well as power balance at any given time, literary representation of Palestine by Palestinians has remained largely outside media and social science accounts of the region. Yet, literature remains one of the most significant and most relatable means of self-representation and exploration of shared local and global human dimensions of conflict and strife. Palestinian literature is perhaps the richest yet the least explored archive on Palestine.  It has been multilingual, diverse in mode and spans a long historical period.

Lydia Wright, Bodleian Librarian for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Mohamed-Salah Omri, Professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St John’s College have teamed up to highlight this diversity in a dedicated display this month at the Bodleian Nizami Ganjavi Library. The display is an invitation to read Palestinian poetry, short stories, memoirs and novels in their original Arabic, English, and Hebrew, as well as in English translation.

The call to read follows a series of seminars lead by Professor Mohamed-Salah Omri in collaboration with Ziad Kiblawi, an Oxford DPhil student focusing on Arabic intellectual history. These seminars were designed to read and discuss Palestine through its literatures. The series aims to participate in an inclusive and democratic decolonial education, which does not exclude forms of coloniality and anti-colonial struggles based on considerations of racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds. They took place in hybrid mode and attracted hundreds of participants from a wide audience, which included university students, staff and the general public from around the world. Video recordings of the three seminars (Poetic Palestine, Gaza Writes, and Expressions of Exile) can be found on Professor Omri’s website. Together with the books proposed for reading by the library they aim to provide a window on how Palestinians represented their personal and collective history; expressed their hopes and reflected on their society in a diversity of styles, modes and languages.

The books on display are a mere selection from the relevant resources available at the library, which could serve as teaching support, research material and reading for pleasure.

Do drop-by the display at the NGL or browse the suggested readings below.

For further information, please contact: Mohamed-Salah Omri or Lydia Wright.

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1919-1994) (جبرا ابراهيم جبرا) 

• The first well: a Bethlehem boyhood. Translated by Boullata, Issa J. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995)
• البئر الاولى : فصول من سيرة ذاتية . لندن : رياض الريس للکتب والنشر،  (1987)

Emile Shukri Habibi (1922-1996) (إميل حبيبي, אמיל חביבי‎)

• The secret life of Saeed the pessoptimist (London: Arabia, 2010, c1985)
• Al-waqāʼiʿ al-gharībah fī ikhtifāʼ Saʿīd Abī al-Naḥs al-Mutashāʼil. al-Ṭabʻah 2. (Bayrūt: Dār Ibn Khaldūn, 1974)

Samira Azzam (1927-1967) (سميرة عزام) 

• Al-sāʿah wa-al-insān (Bayrūt: Dār al-ʿAwdah, 1982)
• Ashyāʼ ṣaghīrah (Bayrūt: Dār al-ʿAwdah, 1982)

Taha Muhammad Ali (1931-2011) (طه محمد علي) 

• So what: new & selected poems (with a story), 1971-2005. Translated by Cole, Peter; Hijazi, Yahya and Levin, Gabriel (Port Townsend, Wash: Copper Canyon Press, 2006)
• שירים قصائد.  Translated by Shammas, Anton. | שמאס, אנטון. | Mahad. 1. | תל־אביב : אנדלוס , (2006)

Edward W. Said (1935-2003)

• Out of place: a memoir. (London: Granta, 2000)

Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani (1936-1972) (غسان فايز كنفاني‎)

• Men in the sun, and other Palestinian stories. (London: Heinemann Educational; Washington D.C: Three Continents Press, 1978)
• Rijāl fī al-shams. (Bayrūt: Dār al-Ṭalīʿah, 1963)

Sahar Khalifeh (1941-) (سحر خليفة) 

• Wild thorns. (London: Al Saqi Books, 1985)
• Al-ṣabbār: riwāyah. Khalīfah, Saḥar. (Bayrūt: Dār al-Ādāb, [19?])

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) (مَحمُود دَرْوِيْش) 

• Why did you leave the horse alone? Translated by Shāhīn, Muḥammad. (London: Hesperus Press, 2014)
• لماذا تركت الحصان وحيدا . الطبعة 1. ، لندن : رياض الريس للكتب والنشر،  (1995)

Mourid Barghouti (1944-2021) (مريد البرغوثي) 

• I saw Ramallah. (Cairo; [Great Britain]: American University in Cairo Press, c2000)
• Raʼaytu Rām Allāh. al-Ṭabʿah 1. ([Cairo]: Dār al-Hilāl, 1997)

Elias Khoury (1948-) (إلياس خوري) 

• Bāb al-shams: [riwāyah]. al-Ṭabʿah 1. (Bayrūt: Dār al-Ādāb, 1998)
• Gate of the sun. (London: Vintage, 2006)

Anton Shammas (1950-) (أنطون شماس, אנטון שמאס) 

• Arabesques. Translated by Eden, Vivian Sohn. (London: Viking, 1988)
• ערבסקות ʿArabesḳot. (תל אביב : עם עובד וספרי מייקלמרק , 1986)

Raja Shehadeh (1951-)

• Strangers in the house. (London: Profile, 2009)

Suad Amiry (1951-) (سعاد العامري) 

• Sharon and my mother-in-law : Ramallah diaries. (London: Granta, 2005)

Ghassan Zaqtan (1954-) (غسان زقطان) 

• The silence that remains : selected poems, 1982-2003. Joudah, Fady, 1971- editor. (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, [2017?])
• كطير من القش يتبعني : شعر. الطبعة الأولى.  بيروت : رياض الريس للكتب و النشر، (2008)

Selma Dabbagh (1970-) (سلمى الدباغ) 

• Out of it. (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation; London: Bloomsbury, 2013)

Suheir Hammad (1973-) (سهير حماد) 

• Born Palestinian, born Black. (Brooklyn, NY: UpSet Press, 2010)

Mosab Abu Toha (1993-)

• Things you may find hidden in my ear: poems from Gaza. (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2022)

Yousif M. Qasmiyeh

• Eating the archive. (Talgarreg, Wales : Broken Sleep Books, [2023?])

Anthologies:

•  قول يا طير. : نصوص ودراسة في الحكاية الشعبية الفلسطينية. مهوي، ابراهيم،, مؤلف، مترجم، محرر. | كناعنة، شريف،, مؤلف. | سليمان، جابر،, مترجم، محقق., طبعة ثالثة.  بيروت : مؤسسة الدراسات الفلسطينية،  (2013)
• A map of absence : an anthology of Palestinian writing on the Nakba. Edited by Alshaer, Atef (London: Saqi Books, 2019)
• The book of Gaza. Edited by Seif, Atef Abu, Milsom, Chelsea, and Pyott, Lauren. (Manchester: Comma, 2014)
• Light in Gaza : writings born of fire. Edited by Abusalim, Jehad, Bing, Jennifer, and Lotze, Michael. (Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2022)
• Palestine +100. Edited by Ghalayini, Basma. (Manchester: Comma Press, 2019)