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books on, about, and made by palestinians. non-fiction books about palestine, palestinian poetry, history books, fiction books by palestinian authors, links to free e-books and poems. i apologize in advance for not breaking this down by genre / type.
LINKS & RESOURCES:
Free Ebooks for a Free Palestine!
Verso Books: Solidarity with Palestine: Free Resources and Further Reading
Free Palestine! A Reading List
Books for a Free Palestine
Google Drive of Palestinian Poetry made by @firstfullmoon
Palestinian poems series by @fiercynn
40 books to understand Palestine
FICTION:
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh
The Things We See in the Light by Amal Awad
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
Secrets Under the Olive Tree by Nevien Shaabneh
Trees for the Absentees by Ahlam Bsharat
The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah
Mother Country by Etaf Rum
The Sea Cloak and other stories by Nayrouz Qarmout
The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
My First and Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh
Velvet by Huzama Habayeb
Haifa Fragments by Khulud Khamis
NON - FICTION:
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
On Palestine By Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe and Frank Barat
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire by Jehad Abusalim (Editor), Jennifer Bing (Editor), Mike Merryman-Lotze (Editor)
Except for Palestine The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky
Where the Line Is Drawn by Raja Shehadeh
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights by Omar Barghouti
Palestine: A Socialist Introduction [edited] by Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean
From the River to the Sea [edited] by Sai Englert, Michal Schatz and Rosie Warren
Palestine Speaks [edited] by Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek
The Punishment of Gaza by Gideon Levy
The Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said
I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti
Shell Houses by Rasha Abdulhadi
Born Palestinian, Born Black by Suheir Hammad
Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat
Orientalism by Edward W. Said
Gaza Writes Back by Refaat Alareer
Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd
Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy Al-Asheq
The Butterfly's Burden by Mahmoud Darwish
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i do think theres something sad about how largely only the literature that's considered especially good or important is intentionally preserved. i want to read stuff that ancient people thought sucked enormous balls
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Orientalism is the worst its been since the 1800's. Palestinians are not your OCs, your props, your narrative devices, we're not your saviours, we're not your models, we're not your objects.
Go fucking read Edward Said's Orientalism. We already hashed this shit out!!! And by we I literally mean Palestinian scholars specifically!!!!
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You can find the 600+ documents here. Help preserve Palestinian history
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My favorite Shakespeare thing is when he writes a major plot point but just has someone tell us about it to save on special effects.
Hamlet gets kidnapped by pirates but we don’t see that part. It’s a letter.
The Oracle of Delphi shows up in the Winter’s Tale and rather than do all the special effects required to make that adequately supernatural, two guys come on stage and go “woah that was cool”
There’s a big storm on the night that Duncan is murdered and we learn about this when half the cast of Macbeth says “sure was stormy last night”
Shakespeare, the OG low-budget director taking the easy way out.
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Book Recommendations (from a lit grad student)
So, as I have come to the end of my MA in world lit, I thought I should give you a list of some of the best books I've read, or learnt from. I ignore established canon and give to you recommendations from across the globe and across all genres. Books that defined their genre, or made an impact, or are just really cool and enjoyable to read. This list is not all dead white men.
I have split the list by era/year of publication primarily for easy reading. A lot of the sections are arbitrary. Some of them are not.
Note: This list is not conclusive! This is based on my own readings, and my own, personal, opinions. You have the right to your own opinions and preferences. If you have any suggestions, add them on below.
Classic lit (pre-1700)
Aristole - Poetics (c. 335 BCE)
As much as I hate it...this one is actually pretty important. I know I said 'contributions to literary canon don't matter', and here I am, immediately doing the opposite. But! Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest treatise on literary theory that has survived to the modern day. You want to know where our ideas of comedy and tragedy come from? Poetics. Three act structure? Poetics. Plot and character? Poetics. Key terms like catharsis, hubris, hamartia? Poetics. We had to read this for creative writing, and did I hate it? Yes. Am I a better writer for having read it? Also yes
Plato - The Republic (c. 375 BCE)
Plato is quite easy to read, of the classical philosophers. His works are mostly dialogues between characters, which makes them more engaging that some other dry philosophy texts. I wrote out a longer post with an explanation of Plato's Republic specifically here.
Genji Monogatari (pre-1021)
The first novel ever! Originally written in Japanese, be careful of your translations because most are of questionable quality. I've only read the first one by Suematsu and that's uhhhhh Bad™ but I think the current waterstones edition is decent?
The Völsunga saga OR The Vinland sagas (early 13th century)
Ah, how to choose just one Norse saga? These are both pretty solid examples of their style, and short (always a plus). The Völsunga saga was the inspiration behind Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (famous for the piece The Valkyrie), and most likely Tolkien's works. The Vinland sagas supposedly have an anime/manga series inspired by them, though looking at the synopsis I cannot see where the inspiration was other than time period. Norse sagas - especially the Icelandic ones such as Vinland - are actually pretty good guides to real historic events, which is very cool. I could go on for hours about this, but I'll spare you the rambling.
Thomas More - Utopia (1516)
Lovely little sarcastic book about tudor politics and human nature all wrapped up in the original 'utopian text'. Surprisingly funny for something written so long ago, and very easy to read. I wrote a longer post about it here
Aphra Behn - Oroonoko (1688)
Hated it, but the themes are interesting and wow did the author lead an interesting life. Widely considered to be the first novel written in English, deals with colonialism, slavery, and honour, and Aphra Behn was a spy? I'm sure some of you will eat that up. Be warned, very 'noble savage'-y book, but less racist than it could've been so cool, I guess?
Early Modern Drama
Christopher Marlowe - Edward II (1592)
Gay. So gay. We're not supposed to call it gay (because of a whole host of reasons that I can and will explain if anyone shows up in my askbox complaining about academics) but it is a very very queer play and Kit Marlowe was too which is even better. Also our one and only history play on this list. Anyone who already knows how Edward II died (thanks horrible histories) do not spoil the ending.
Shakespeare - Twelfth Night (1602)
As with any Shakespeare, watch a performance if you can. I highly recommend the National Theatre version that was up on youtube in 2020. Very gay, no one is cishet. Lots of singing and dancing. Prime example of Shakespeare's comedies with added gender shenanigans.
Shakespeare - Hamlet (1609)
Yes I'm basic. Yes I like Hamlet. In the same way that Twelfth Night is a great example of Shakespeare's comedies, Hamlet is a good example of his tragedies. Mostly, though, I'm recommending this because the castle it's set in in Denmark (Elsinore) a) actually exists and b) does an amazing educational programme, with live actors performing scenes all across the castle! Watching the 'to be or not to be' soliloquy in the banquet hall just adds a whole other level to the experience of reading the play.
Shakespeare - Measure for Measure OR The Tempest
Shakespeare's problem plays. I couldn't pick just one, because they're both fantastic in different ways. Measure for Measure features what can only be described as the early-modern version of an ace protagonist - Isabella - who I adore. The Tempest has a really interesting portrayal of early colonialism and slavery. The reason they are 'problem plays' is they check all the boxes for a comedy...but they're not funny. At all. And they also check some of the boxes for a tragedy. They're certainly interesting reading
Ben Jonson - The Alchemist (1610)
Just a really good, solid play. Very funny. Bunch of con artists set up an elaborate scheme to rob rich people. Also very good for showing class structures of the time. Shakespeare gets all the recognition for this era but Jonson is just as good really, and definitely as clever.
Regency and Victorian lit (1700-1900)
Jane Austen
Literally anything by Austen. She is just so funny, so witty, and I wholeheartedly believe she'd be a feminist today. Master of the female gaze in literature, but beyond that she is basically credited with the invention of free indirect discourse, which is super cool. I have only read Pride and Prejudice, but I have heard good things about most of her books, so I don't feel bad recommending all of them.
William Blake
There's one poem by Blake about a London street urchin that breaks my heart every time I read it and that is the sole reason behind this recommendation I hate Romantic poets.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1818)
You knew it was coming. First sci-fi, gothic horror, teenage girl writer. Gotta love Shelley.
Frederik Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederik Douglass (1845)
You know those books that are horrifying because they're real? That's this book. Doesn't shy away from the horrors of slavery and for a reason. This is an autobiography. It is not fiction.
Gowongo Mohawk - Wep-ton-no-mah (1890s)
My favourite play of all time. You will need to do a trip to either the British Library or the Library of Congress to read it because there are no other copies, but I did do a whole podcast episode about it because I'm apparently the expert? You can find it here.
Bram Stoker - Dracula (1894)
I know here on tumblr we adore Dracula, and for good reason. It's horrifying, it's got a blorbo, if you haven't read it already, go with a dracula daily read-through or @re-dracula for the best experience. (Re:Dracula also has episodes where they get scholars on to talk about things like racism and gender and queer theory surrounding the text which is SO COOL as an ex-lit student I love listening to those episodes.
Post-1900
Oscar Wilde - De Profundis (1905)
We had to read a snippet of this for A-Level and I wish it had been more because wow. Most lists like this will recommend Dorian Gray because it's a novel, but De Prof is so heartfelt and beautiful and sad and deserves to be read.
Baroness Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
First masked vigilante/superhero! If you like comic books or superhero media, this is where it all started (funny how all the firsts so far have been written by women 🤔)
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
If you only read one book in your life about WW1 make it this one! It is heartbreaking and beautifully written and makes you feel so many things. It was banned in...a lot of places for being anti-war (especially as WW2 came closer) and also because it was written by a German who was anti-war which was apparently impossible to comprehend. The prose is truly something to behold.
Modern lit (Post-war era)
George Orwell - 1984 (1948) OR Animal Farm (1945)
Which one you should read depends a lot on how long your preferred book is and how metaphorical your tastes are. Both are very good explorations of corrupt governments. Animal Farm is an easier read and shorter and is much more allegorical. 1984 is very in-your-face about how much authoritarian governments suck. Do not discount 1984 just because Winston is a terrible person. Everyone knows he's terrible. That's the whole point. He is a normal terrible person, not a cartoonishly evil terrible person, or an angelically perfect revolutionary. All the characters are realistic for their situation.
Maya Angelou - I know why the caged bird sings (1969)
Another one with some beautiful prose. She's a poet and you can tell. It's an autobiography, plus there's a lot of clever stuff going on with how it's written. You could write an essay about this. I did.
Ghassan Khanafani - Return to Haifa (1969)
A short story by a Palestinian author - we were given this by our Palestinian lecturer as an intro to the conflict and the terrible things that colonialism has done to the region. Additionally, there are notes throughout that help explain the significance of things and background and all that jazz. There is a play version that is probably easier to find because it was published more recently but it's not as good.
Ben Okri - The Famished Road (1993)
I did not read this book for uni and I think that may have influenced my opinion of it slightly but I still credit it as one of the reasons I got interested in world lit and translation. It's a really beautiful exploration of Nigerian mythological tradition and its effect on family and politics in this kind of fascinatingly weird style that's both magical realism and modernist? I hate modernism but love magical realism more so.
Carmen Maria Machado - In the Dream House (2019)
What a book oh wow. It reads like poetry. I cannot think of anything coherent to say my brain is screaming. The novel explores abuse in queer relationships, which is something people don't normally talk about, through some very interesting motifs and I love it so much. It is hard to read, but very rewarding.
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When I took my literary criticism theory class in undergrad the professor told us that in modern literary criticism “The author isn’t dead but they are a ghost breathing down your neck”
Basically, the old way of thinking was that the point of literary criticism was to find the true original intentions of the author. Then death of the author was introduced and literary criticism swung hard the other way, saying that what the author thinks and the context they were in doesn’t matter.
Nowadays, it’s somewhere in between. Yes the author had intentions and yes the work had context. But the work also has context right now and a history of people reading it and interpreting it and sometimes an author puts meaning in something that they didn’t realize they were.
I can’t sit down and interview Jane Austin about every little decision she made in Pride and Prejudice but I can look at what we know about her life and the era and place she lived in. I can also ignore all that and look at what the book means right now to modern people. I can compare Austin to writers in her own time as well as writers now. I can speculate on what I think was on purpose and what wasn’t.
A lot of people go on about death of the author like that’s the only correct way to interpret fiction when modern lit crit moved past it years ago. Reading critically is a conversation between the author, the reader, and the various contexts surrounding both of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum but at the same time nobody can anticipate every interpretation their work might present with.
The question of analysis and separating art from artist isn’t a simple cut and dry issue. It never has been and it never will be.
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If none of them married, how desperate would the Bennett girls actually have been?
Well the only dowry they have is £50 apiece from their mother’s small inheritance, per year; so that’s a total of £250 generated by Mrs. Bennet’s inherited investments per annum.
The Dashwoods (four women) are living on £500 a year when they are forced to live in Barton Cottage (with good-will making the rent presumably ridiculously low thanks to Sir John Middleton’s good nature, to say nothing of all the dinners and outings he invites the ladies to, which will help them economize on housekeeping costs for heavier meals.)
So there would be six Bennet women left to live on half as much as the Dashwoods are barely scraping by on. £250 is roughly considered enough to keep ONE gentleman at a barely-genteel level of leisure (presuming he does not keep a horse or estate or have any major expenses beyond securing his own lodgings/clothes/meals at a level becoming of a gentleman.)
None of the Bennet girls have been educated well enough for them to be governesses to support themselves, so…yes, their situation would heavily rely on mega-charity from others to just help them survive, much less maintain them in the lifestyle they’ve been accustomed to. The Dashwood women have NO social life beyond the outings provided by Sir John and the offer of Mrs. Jennings to host the older girls in London–otherwise they’d be stuck in their cottage, meeting absolutely no eligible men, creating a cycle of being poor and unmarried and too poor to meet anyone with money they could marry.
If the Bennet girls don’t at least have ONE of them marry well enough to help the rest before their father dies, they are really, truly, deeply fucked.
They may joke about beautiful Jane being the saviour of the family, but…it’s true. Mr. Bennet failed his daughters several times over in A) presuming he’d have a son, B) not saving money independently from his income to support his family after his death when it became clear he wasn’t going to have a son, C) not educating them well enough to enable them to support themselves in even in the disagreeable way of being a governess, D) not making any effort to escort his daughters to London or even local assemblies to help their matrimonial chances because he just doesn’t feel like it, E) throwing up his hands and shrugging when faced with the crises of Mr. Collins and Wickham.
Much as we are relieved on a romantic level that Mr. Bennet’s support of Elizabeth saves her from parental pressure to accept Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet is NOT A DICK for pushing for the match, because on a material level it very much means they get to KEEP THEIR HOUSE and gain a connection to the powerful patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh, which could be VERY advantageous for the other unmarried girls.
And the scandal of Wickham very nearly scuppers the chances of ANY of the other girls, and Wickham is a further DRAIN on the family finances, not a man who is going to substantially be able to support them. It is SUCH a disaster, and of course there’s not much Mr. Bennet can do until they are found, but he’s away in London and doing…what, exactly? Mr. Gardiner takes over and manages everything and Mr. Bennet seems happy to just let him.
Mr. Bennet does the ABSOLUTE LEAST, and actively damages his children’s futures by his inaction AND by his one action to support Lizzie’s individual needs being prioritized over the collective gain, which…I mean, Lizzie is going to be JUST as homeless and destitute as her sisters when he dies, so much good being Dad’s Favourite is going to do her. :/
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Someone today will read Shakespeare’s hamlet and say omg he’s just like me fr. Another person will read moby dick and proclaim Ishmael as an adhd king.
A person grieving for their recently deceased lover reads the iliad and they watch as Achilles rages and rages and god how righteous anger fueld by love is so devastating that it’s ramifications still affect the world several thousand years later.
We might one day settle down and read the epic of gilgamesh and watch as a king has to accept the death of the person he loved the most. One of the very first stories ever written and it was about coping with death, and how to grieve.
We don’t read classics because they’re old, we read them because they remind us that we are never alone. That a character created over 500 years ago struggled with the exact same problems we all still have today. That even a king from centuries past had to deal with death just like me. That’s what makes stories so powerful–they prove to us that we are never truly alone in what we are feeling.
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girl im bored lets browse academic articles
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When I'm drafting I have a document with quotes and notes from every single paper and book I cite. With a full citation at the top as the heading. It makes it much easier to cite while you're writing that way because you can just copy/paste the citation into the footnotes (we used mhra for undergrad and chicago for masters).
Before I had this method, I'd footnote just the name of the author or paper, or an identifying comment ("that one paper with medusa in the title" or "the author with bullshit opinions but that one really good line about capitalism") and come back and do it later. Both methods work, just the first one works better for my writing style.
in re plagiarism and citation and people not knowing how to do it
in the capstone class of my MASTER's degree, I had to do a group paper with fellow students who had all done 6+ years of collegiate study to get there
we shared drafts of our portions and they had no citations and i was like???? and they were like "it's a draft i'll put the citations in at the end" and i was like ???????
because by the time you're done writing the thing you're not going to remember what you got where and whether you synthesized information together! this is how "i thought i thought of it" plagiarism cases occur!!!!
anyway i told them at the bare minimum any time they referenced a numerical figure they needed to cite it, and since it was a paper on accounting fraud that mostly worked out. but i could tell they were citing stuff simply because i'd told them to cite where numbers came from, because they didn't bother to cite some non-numerical things that definitely needed it.
anyway this is why when you have classes that have multiple assignments for a paper to teach you how to write it, annotated bibliography comes before drafting. because you're supposed to have your sources and know what's in them when you start writing.
to current college students: PLEASE put the citations in as you're writing not as you're editing. i know it seems like a pita especially if you don't know the formatting well, but that's what tools like Purdue Owl are for. Tell it what citation format you're supposed to use, what kind of source you have, fill in the fields and it will format the citation for you.
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Just finished hamlet & had to share THIS
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If you want to honor Mr. Rafaat's memory in light of his passing, please download the book here:
And don't stop talking about Palestine!!
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signal boost!! (link)
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always thinking about the production of hamlet i saw at the pop up globe a couple of years ago where everyone was costumed in typical shakespearean dress and the set was fairly minimal BUT! they gave polonius an iphone. it was like a running gag that his ringtone kept going off when hamlet or claudius were trying to speak and they would get more and more impatient with him every time. the cast had perfect comedic timing and it was such a perfect modernisation of typical shakespeare humour
but oh my God. the nervous laughter that rippled through the audience when his phone went off behind the tapestry. the heavy silence that followed, interrupted only by the incessant chime of polonius' ringtone and a muffled "shit, shit!" while he tried to decline the call. it keeps ringing even after hamlet has already put his sword through him. hamlet picks it up in his bloody hands and ends the call, puts it back in polonius' grasp before turning back to face gertrude.
hands down the best set up and pay-off of any addition to a shakespeare play i have ever witnessed
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