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This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature
352
by Ahdaf Soueif (Editor), Omar Robert Hamilton (Editor)
Ahdaf Soueif
This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature
352
by Ahdaf Soueif (Editor), Omar Robert Hamilton (Editor)
Ahdaf Soueif
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Overview
Writers from Alice Walker to Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on one of the most vital gatherings of writers and readers in the world.
The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power."
Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations.
Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Miéville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman.
The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power."
Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations.
Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Miéville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781632868855 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 07/18/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 785,792 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Ahdaf Soueif is the author of Aisha, Sandpiper, and In the Eye of the Sun. Her bestselling novel The Map of Love was shortlisted for a Booker Prize. The founder of PalFest, she is a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine. Soueif lives in London and Cairo. ahdafsoueif.com
Omar Robert Hamilton co-founded PalFest and has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Guernica. His debut novel, The City Always Wins, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus. orhamilton.com
William Sutcliffe is the author of twelve novels, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced? and The Wall, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has written for adults, young adults and children, and has been translated into twenty-eight languages. His 2008 novel Whatever Makes You Happy is now a Netflix Original film starring Patricia Arquette, Felicity Huffman and Angela Bassett. It was released in August 2019 under the title Otherhood.
His latest novel, The Gifted, The Talented and Me, was described by The Times as 'dangerously funny' and by the Guardian as 'refreshingly hilarious'.
Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.
Michael Palin was born in Sheffield in 1943. He was a founder member of the Monty Python team and has written and performed in numerous successful films and television series, including The Missionary, Time Bandits, A Private Function, A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends and GBH. In addition to the bestselling Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, he has written a number of books, notably Ripping Yarns with Terry Jones, and several children's books including The Mirrorstone, Small Harry and the Toothache Pills, Limericks and the Cyril stories. His first stage play, The Weekend, was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford before transferring to the Strand Theatre in London, 1994, with Richard Wilson in the lead role.
Susan Abulhawa is a human rights activist, a biologist, and political commentator. She is the founder ofPlaygrounds for Palestine, a children's organisation dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, translated into 26 languages. She lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter and their beloved dogs.
@sjabulhawa
Architect and writer Suad Amiry lives in Ramallah where she is director of the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation. She received the Italian Viareggio-Versilia Prize for Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries in 2004.
Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts&Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio&Music Awards. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.
Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels: In the City by the Sea (shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Kartography (also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2018, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and won the London Hellenic Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013; she was also awarded a South Bank Arts Award in 2018. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.
@kamilashamsie
Ghada Karmi is an honorary research fellow and an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. Between 1999 and 2001 she was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, where she worked on a reconciliation project in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Previously, she was Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Leeds University. Most of her recent research has been on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has appeared widely on the British and Arab media and also contributes articles on Middle Eastern subjects to the Arabic and British press. Between 1972 and 1979, she worked on medieval Islamic medicine, in which she attained a Ph.D. from London University, and has continued to carry out research in this field.
Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Prize. He has written the libretto for a new opera Bhutto. He writes regularly for the New York Times, BBC Urdu, and BBC Punjabi. He currently splits his time between Berlin and Karachi.
Rachel Holmes is the author of the Secret Life of Dr James Barry, The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman. She is co-editor, with Lisa Appignanensi and Susie Orbach, of Fifty Shades of Feminism and co-commissioning editor, with Josie Rourke and Chris Haydon, of Sixty-Six Books: Twenty-First Century Writers Speak to the King James Bible. She lives in Gloucestershire.
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London and spent his formative years in Khartoum, Sudan. Since then he has settled in a number of cities, including London, Aarhus, Barcelona and, more recently, Amsterdam.
The author of seven novels, his work, fiction and non-fiction, has been critically acclaimed and widely translated. He has published six crime novels featuring private detective Makana, using the pen name Parker Bilal.
jamalmahjoub.com
Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of Aisha, Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. Her collection of cultural and political essays, Mezzaterra, was published in 2004, as was her translation of I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. She has been awarded the Blue Metropolis Literary Prize (in Montreal) and the Constantin Cavafis Award (in Cairo and Athens), and is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, for which she was awarded the Hay Medal for Festivals in 2017.
Ahdaf Soueif is also a journalist and her work is syndicated throughout the world. For the last five years she has been a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine, and throughout the 2011 uprisings in Cairo Adhaf Soueif reported front the ground for the Guardian, and appeared on television and radio. She lives in London and Cairo.
Omar Robert Hamilton co-founded PalFest and has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Guernica. His debut novel, The City Always Wins, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus. orhamilton.com
William Sutcliffe is the author of twelve novels, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced? and The Wall, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has written for adults, young adults and children, and has been translated into twenty-eight languages. His 2008 novel Whatever Makes You Happy is now a Netflix Original film starring Patricia Arquette, Felicity Huffman and Angela Bassett. It was released in August 2019 under the title Otherhood.
His latest novel, The Gifted, The Talented and Me, was described by The Times as 'dangerously funny' and by the Guardian as 'refreshingly hilarious'.
Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.
Michael Palin was born in Sheffield in 1943. He was a founder member of the Monty Python team and has written and performed in numerous successful films and television series, including The Missionary, Time Bandits, A Private Function, A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends and GBH. In addition to the bestselling Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, he has written a number of books, notably Ripping Yarns with Terry Jones, and several children's books including The Mirrorstone, Small Harry and the Toothache Pills, Limericks and the Cyril stories. His first stage play, The Weekend, was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford before transferring to the Strand Theatre in London, 1994, with Richard Wilson in the lead role.
Susan Abulhawa is a human rights activist, a biologist, and political commentator. She is the founder ofPlaygrounds for Palestine, a children's organisation dedicated to upholding The Right to Play for Palestinian children. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was an international bestseller, translated into 26 languages. She lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter and their beloved dogs.
@sjabulhawa
Architect and writer Suad Amiry lives in Ramallah where she is director of the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation. She received the Italian Viareggio-Versilia Prize for Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries in 2004.
Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts&Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio&Music Awards. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.
Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels: In the City by the Sea (shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Kartography (also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2018, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and won the London Hellenic Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013; she was also awarded a South Bank Arts Award in 2018. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.
@kamilashamsie
Ghada Karmi is an honorary research fellow and an assistant lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. Between 1999 and 2001 she was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, where she worked on a reconciliation project in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Previously, she was Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Leeds University. Most of her recent research has been on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and has appeared widely on the British and Arab media and also contributes articles on Middle Eastern subjects to the Arabic and British press. Between 1972 and 1979, she worked on medieval Islamic medicine, in which she attained a Ph.D. from London University, and has continued to carry out research in this field.
Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Prize. He has written the libretto for a new opera Bhutto. He writes regularly for the New York Times, BBC Urdu, and BBC Punjabi. He currently splits his time between Berlin and Karachi.
Rachel Holmes is the author of the Secret Life of Dr James Barry, The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman. She is co-editor, with Lisa Appignanensi and Susie Orbach, of Fifty Shades of Feminism and co-commissioning editor, with Josie Rourke and Chris Haydon, of Sixty-Six Books: Twenty-First Century Writers Speak to the King James Bible. She lives in Gloucestershire.
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London and spent his formative years in Khartoum, Sudan. Since then he has settled in a number of cities, including London, Aarhus, Barcelona and, more recently, Amsterdam.
The author of seven novels, his work, fiction and non-fiction, has been critically acclaimed and widely translated. He has published six crime novels featuring private detective Makana, using the pen name Parker Bilal.
jamalmahjoub.com
Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of Aisha, Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. Her collection of cultural and political essays, Mezzaterra, was published in 2004, as was her translation of I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. She has been awarded the Blue Metropolis Literary Prize (in Montreal) and the Constantin Cavafis Award (in Cairo and Athens), and is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, for which she was awarded the Hay Medal for Festivals in 2017.
Ahdaf Soueif is also a journalist and her work is syndicated throughout the world. For the last five years she has been a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine, and throughout the 2011 uprisings in Cairo Adhaf Soueif reported front the ground for the Guardian, and appeared on television and radio. She lives in London and Cairo.
Table of Contents
Map xi
Introduction Ahdaf Soueif 1
Welcome Mahmoud Darwish 7
Where Does Palestine Begin? Yasmin El-Rifae 11
The Gaza Suite: Gaza Suheir Hammad 17
Jerusalem Ahdaf Soueif 21
Draw Your Own Conclusions J.M. Coetzee 35
Three Encounters on the West Bank Mercedes Kemp 37
Through the Looking-Glass Adam Foulds 43
Sleeping in Gaza Najwan Darwish 55
Once Upon a Jerusalem Susan Abulhawa 59
Permission to Enter Jeremy Harding 65
Privatising Allenby Suad Amiry 69
Allenby Border Crossing Sabrina Mahfouz 73
Qalandia Gillian Slovo 77
After Ten Years John Horner 81
Diary Brigid Keenan 85
India and Israel: An Ideological Convergence Pankaj Mishra 93
In the Company of Writers Kamila Shamsie 99
The Gaza Suite: Jabaliya Suheir Hammad 103
Letters from Gaza Atef Abu Saif 107
Gaza, from Cairo Selma Dabbagh 111
Gaza, from the Diaspora - Part One Jehan Bseiso 117
Darkening the Dramaturgy Omar El-Khairy 121
This Poem Will Not End Apartheid Remi Kanazi 127
An Image Geoff Dyer 131
Poetry and Protest Maath Musleh 135
Cold Violence Teju Cole 139
The City of David Ghada Karmi 145
The Writer's Job William Sutcliffe 151
From the Diaspora - Part Two Jehan Bseiso Gaza 155
Equality, Supremacy and Security Ed Pavlic 159
A Gift for PalFest Alice Walker 165
Silence is a Language Jeremy Harding 169
Drawing PalFest Muiz 173
Diary Deborah Moggach 177
Until It Isn't Remi Kanazi 181
Sight Ru Freeman 185
The End of Apartheid Henning Mankell 195
What We Witnessed Michael Ondaatje 199
Stories from the Armenian Quarter Nancy Kricorian 201
A Scramble of Authors Michael Palin 205
Bethlehem Sabrina Mahfouz 209
Crucifixion Nathalie Handal 213
Pakistan/Palestine Mohammed Hanif 219
Hebron Sabrina Mahfouz 229
The Stranglehold Victoria Brittain 233
The Sound of a Festival Chinua Achebe 241
South Africa and Israel: A Familiar Geography Rachel Holmes 243
The Gaza Suite: Rafah Suheir Hammad 251
Shujaiyya Dust Molly Crabapple 255
Gaza Sabrina Mahfouz 261
A Decade of Writers' Walks Raja Shehadeh 265
Let Your Lives Speak Linda Spalding 271
A Bus Stop in London Najwan Darwish 277
The Scattering Claire Messud 281
How to Survive Exile Sabrina Mahfouz 285
What We Talk about When We Talk about Palestine Jamal Mahjoub 289
The Gaza Suite: Tel El Hawa Suheir Hammad 297
Exrr Strategy China Miéville 301
The Gaza Suite: Zeitoun Suheir Hammad 309
The End of Art is Peace Omar Robert Hamilton 313
Author Biographies 329
Credits 339
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