Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation

In Going Home, Orwell Prize winning author Raja Shehadeh travels Ramallah and records the changing face of the city. Walking along the streets he grew up in, he tells the stories of the people, the relationships, the houses, and the businesses that were and now are cornerstones of the city and his community. This is, in many ways, an elegy. Green spaces - gardens and hills crowned with olive trees - have been replaced by tower blocks and concrete lots; the occupation and the settlements have further entrenched themselves in every aspect of movement-from the roads that can and cannot be used to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent people leaving the West Bank. The culture of the city has also shifted with Islam taking a more prominent role in people's everyday and political lives and the geography of the city. As he grapples with ageing and the failures of the resistance, Shehadeh notes the ways that the past still invades the presence from the ruins of the compound that was Yasser Arafat's home to the power of emigrated families to reshape neighbourhoods by selling their long-abandoned homes. This is perhaps Raja Shehadeh's most painfully visceral book.

About the Author :
Raja Shehadeh is Palestine's leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books published by Profile including Strangers in the House, Occupation Diaries, Language of War, Language of Peace, and Where the Line is Drawn. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize for Palestinian Walks, which was also published by Profile. He lives in Ramallah in Palestine.

Review :
Palestine's greatest prose writer Going Home cements the author's reputation as the best-known Palestinian writing in English Going Home is about searching for the meaning of 'home' when living in a city under occupation ... In this book, the bonds that bind Palestinians to the land are exposed. Personal and political, human and geographical histories are beautifully intertwined and preserved. Luminously clear-sighted ... By turns lyrical, witty and shrewd, Shehadeh is an excellent walking companion An insightful, illuminating book Shehadeh's descriptive powers are balanced by the acuity of his political insights Praise for Where the Line is Drawn: Brilliantly evokes the Palestinian tragedy by way of a complex friendship. This is a fiercely intelligent and honest account. Shehadeh [...] is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise. A courageous and timely meditation on the fragility of friendship in dark times, illuminating how affiliation and love[...]can have a profound political power. Written with fierce clarity and unusual compassion, this book touches the human heart of a political tragedy. The question of how and if friendships can survive across political divides is a resonant one - and I can think of no one better than Raja Shehadeh to treat it with the wisdom, toughness and humanity that it deserves. In the dark agony of the Palestine-Israel conflict, Raja Shehadeh offers a rare gift: a lucid, honest, unsparing voice. His humanity and wisdom are invaluable. The wisdom and elegance of Raja Shehadeh's thinking and writing are more necessary than ever. This book...appeals to - and speaks of - an insistence on dignity, regardless of borders and of endless war. Raja Shehadeh is a buoy in a sea of bleakness. This is one of the most intensely human and humane books one is likely to read in a very long while, replete with an elevating dignity and suffused with deep melancholy. Praise for Palestinian Walks: 'Few Palestinians have opened their minds and their hearts with such frankness Shehadeh writes beautifully, his language infused with a lyrical, melancholic sense of loss. An important record of a land marked by conflict that is changing every day Shehadeh describes how the destruction of a beloved landscape mirrors the damage to Palestinian identity ... lyrical nature writing with understated political passion