Reading Palestine

Gives voice to both Palestinian and Israeli writers and those from abroad who travelled to the region

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Reading Palestine: a Literary Guide looks without prejudice at Israel-Palestine through the eyes of writers from biblical times to the present day, allowing the region to come alive through the pens of such diverse personalities as Napoleon Bonaparte, Gustave Flaubert, Lord Curzon, T. E. Lawrence, Sacheverell Sitwell, Linda Grant and Howard Jacobson. With thematic introductions and explanatory notes, the selection includes Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular writings as well as the contrasting narratives of Israeli and Palestinian identity. Before the creation of the nation state, the area was regarded as the Holy Land by all faiths. It was a part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917, then was Mandated to Britain after the First World War. After contradictory promises were made to Arabs and Jews alike, the region has since been disputed in one of the world's longest-running and internationally explosive disputes. This book encompasses the intellectual and social dimensions of the conflict, including the foundations of Zionism and the modern growth of Palestinian culture. But it also looks way beyond the conflict to look at fiction, poetry, costume and family life.
From the architect of Zionism Theodor Herzl to modern Palestinian thinkers such as Edward Said, it explores opposite viewpoints and national loyalties. In works of the imagination it includes the writing of myriad and sometimes unexpected authors such as Mark Twain, Noel Coward, Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill. Much more than another account of the conflict, this book gives voice to both Israeli and Palestinian writers as well as those from outside the region. It considers Palestine's long and much-mythologized history, its landscapes and cities and the way in which it has inspired generations of writers, artists and thinkers.