Palestine: Celebrating 75 Years of Literature

Read Palestinian fiction, poetry, and related literature in weekly meetings with the MEP’s Literature Group. The ongoing catastrophe in the Middle East breaks our hearts daily. As part of our mission to explore creative political resistance to oppression, we will read several novels and poems by Palestinian authors. The novels selected for this session include prominent and emerging writers investigating themes since 1947 of armed resistance, class, the refugee experience, and women’s experience of conflict.

We invite participants to add to our selections, published from 1949 to the present, and tentatively include:

Things You May Find HIdden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha; Minor Detail, by Adania Shibli; selected stories by Ghassan Kanafani; Out of Time: The Collected Stories of Samira Azzam, Arabesques by Anton Shammas, The Arsonists’ City by Hala Alyan, Wild Thorns, by Sahar Khalifeh; Passage to the plaza, by Sahar Khalifeh; A Day in the Life of Abed Salama; Palestine +100, edited by Basma Ghalayini.

Convened by Jacqueline Cantwell, who became involved with the MEP’s Literature Group because of her love of Victor Serge’s novels. Participating in an MEP reading group led by Serge translator Richard Greeman seven years ago, Jacqueline found a community of readers eager to be challenged by the ambitions of international writers devoted to the creative potential of political fiction. Since the death of Michael Lardner, who hosted and organized the Literature Group for so many years, she has taken the lead in furthering the group’s goals of exploring international fiction and encouraging thoughtful conversation.

The map: sampled from the amazing Visualizing Palestine project website.