A Rift in Time - by Raja Shehadeh (Paperback)

About the Book

"An engrossing family memoir that shines a light on Palestine's history, offering a sober yet hopeful view of its people's struggles for freedom, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I. The quest for his great-uncle Najib Nassar, an Ottoman journalist-the details of his life, and the route of his great escape from occupied Palestine-consumed award-winning writer Raja Shehadeh for 2 years. As he traces Najib's footsteps, he discovers that today it would be impossible to flee the cage that Palestine has become. A Rift in Time is a family memoir written in luminescent prose, but it is also a reflection on how Palestine-in particular the disputed Jordan Rift Valley-has been transformed. Most of Palestine's history and that of its people is buried deep in the ground: whole villages have disappeared, and names have been erased from the map. Yet by seeing the bigger picture of the landscape and the unending struggle for freedom as Shehadeh does, it is still possible to look towards a better future, free from Israeli or Ottoman oppression"--

Book Synopsis

An engrossing family memoir that shines a light on Palestine's history, offering a wise, sobering view of how radically conditions there have changed since the late Ottoman Empire, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.

Raja Shehadeh's great-great-uncle Najib Nassar, a journalist born in 1865, spent the first 4 decades of his life under the Ottoman Empire. Ruled by a Muslim Sultan, the region nevertheless saw the coexistence of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and a freedom of movement unthinkable in the present-day Middle East. On a 2-year quest to discover Najib's fascinating story, Shehadeh follows his footsteps through what are now Lebanon and Israel, tracing the fall of the Empire after World War I and the disastrous British Mandate.

A family memoir written in luminescent prose, A Rift in Time also reflects on how Palestine--in particular the disputed Jordan Rift Valley--has been transformed. Most of Palestine's history and that of its people is buried deep in the ground: whole villages have disappeared, and names have been erased from the map. Yet by seeing the bigger picture of the landscape and the unending struggle for freedom as Shehadeh does, it is still possible to look toward a better future.

Review Quotes

"Mr. Shehadeh mourns a land lost. For [T.E.] Lawrence, Palestine was 'a collection of small irritating hills, crushed together pell-mell' but for Mr. Shehadeh, as in his prize-winning Palestinian Walks (2008), the landscape is his inspiration and solace, a history book waiting to be read. Almond trees mark Palestinian villages long gone, their drifts of white blossom gliding to the ground 'in utter, hushed silence'...Mr. Shehadeh's reverence for Palestine's land and history renders it holy anew." --The Economist

"Raja Shehadeh combines the passion of James Baldwin, the cool precision of Primo Levi, and the curiosity of that greatest of flâneurs, Walter Benjamin. An impassioned critic of the cruelty and oppression that remain the daily diet of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, a rueful observer of human vanities, an archaeologist of a Middle Eastern past that Zionism has sought to suppress, Shehadeh has compiled, book by book, with diligence and determination, an essential record of the Palestinian experience. But his books provide us with something far more nourishing, more reflective, more literary, than a mere record. They are the work of a defiant free spirit who, in spite of all the forces ranged against him, has lost neither his intellectual freedom nor his heart." --Adam Shatz, author of The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

About the Author

Raja Shehadeh is one of Palestine's leading writers. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books including Strangers in the House, Occupation Diaries, Palestinian Walks, which won the prestigious Orwell Prize, and We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Other Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.