About the book: A subtle psychological portrait of the author's relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights.
Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.
A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise 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.
Writer
Raja Shehadeh is a lawyer and writer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books including the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks, as well as Strangers in the House; Occupation Diaries; Language of War, Language of Peace; A Rift in Time; Where the Line is Drawn and, Going Home A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation. His most recent book is We Could Have Been Friends My Father and I. In 2022 he was chosen as an international writer of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Ramallah, Palestine.
Discussant
Beshara Doumani is the President of Birzeit University in Palestine and the Mahmoud Darwish Chair for Palestinian Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on the social histories of peoples, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900, and Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. He is currently working on a history of the Palestinians through the social life of stone.