We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I
A Palestinian Memoir
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I
A Palestinian Memoir
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Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781788169974
Number of Pages: 160
Published: 04/08/2022
Width: 13.6 cm
Height: 21.8 cm
Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.
A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.
This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.
Powerful ... It's a mark of Shehadeh's brilliance that this latest revisiting is full of surprises: it's even in tone, but jet-fuelled by implicit emotion; there's no conventional suspense, but it is absolutely gripping ... masterly -- Rachel Aspden * Guardian * Profoundly personal as well as historically significant ... In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, his self-questioning and insistence on focusing on the experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi ... A quiet and deeply felt book -- Hisham Matar * New York Times * A striking story of loss, heartbreak and political perfidy ... This is a tragedy within a tragedy, of a father and son who, despite their similarities, failed to understand one another, against the backdrop of dispossession of the Palestinian people -- Lara Marlowe * Irish Times * Highly readable ... thought-provoking * Observer * Slim but powerful - rich in recent historical detail with a poignant personal trauma threading in and out of it. This is a Palestinian memoir that will endure -- Gerald Butt * Church Times * Praise for the author:
'Palestine's greatest prose writer * Observer * Going Home cements the author's reputation as the best-known Palestinian writing in English * Guardian * Luminously clear-sighted ... By turns lyrical, witty and shrewd, Shehadeh is an excellent walking companion * Prospect * Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise -- Colm Toibin Raja Shehadeh is a buoy in a sea of bleakness -- Rachel Kushner
