Strangers in the House - by Raja Shehadeh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Discover the Classic Coming-of-Age Memoir that Captures the Palestinian Experience for Members of every Generation since the 1948 Nakba

"Unusually honest, beautifully written." -- New York Times Book Review

** With a New Afterword by the Author **

In this new edition of his groundbreaking memoir, Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh offers a moving description of the daily lives of those who have been determined to remain on Palestinian land under Israeli occupation and refusing to relent in the face of efforts to drive them out by making their lives unbearable.

Growing up "in the shadow of home" in the rural hills of the West Bank, he was introduced early to political conflict. He witnessed the numerous arrests of his father, Aziz Shehadeh, who, in 1967, was the first Palestinian to advocate a peaceful, 2-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He predicted that if peace were not acheived, what remained of the Palestinian homeland would be taken away, bit by bit, through Israeli settlement. Ostracized by his fellow Arabs and disillusioned by the failure of either side to recognize his prophetic vision, Aziz retreated from politics. He was murdered in 1985.

Strangers in the House is also the family drama of a difficult relationship between an idealistic son and his politically active father complicated by the arbitrary humiliation of the "occupier's law."

A new Afterword provides an update on the investigation into his father's murder, a history that reflects continued official Israeli efforts to dehumanize Palestinians and to extinguish, once and for all, the possibility of a 2-state solution.

Review Quotes

"Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy, and wise." -- Colm Tóibín

"A moving and heartfelt document that captures the rage and despair of lives stunted by occupation." -- Washington Post

"Unusually honest, beautifully written." -- New York Times Book Review

"Distinctive and truly impressive." -- The Economist

"A stunning autobiography ... a profoundly moving testimony to modern Palestinian life, a more powerful explanation of the Middle Eastern crisis than dozens of lectures and pages of newspaper articles." -- The Daily Star (Beirut)

" A remarkable human document that explains better than a hundred political treatises why there is still no peace in the Middle East." -- Amos Elon

About the Author

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.