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In this award-winning novel (Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature 2006), the celebrated Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh has penned what is at once a re-casting of the story of the Holy Family, a lyrical ode to Arab Jerusalem, and a call for liberation, not just of a nation but for the individual women and men who inhabit it.
After abandoning his beloved Mariam when she falls pregnant, and escaping her brothers’ bullets, Ibrahim abandons his own ideals and dreams of becoming a novelist, opting instead to follow his father’s wishes and seek wealth and commercial success abroad. Thirty years later, lonely and disillusioned, Ibrahim returns to Ramallah to retrace the past he tried to leave behind. He sets out on a long and frustrating quest to track down Mariam, which takes him from the West Bank to Israel. Along the way he encounters his son, Michael, a young man with spiritual powers that enable him to see what is unknown and find what has gone missing.
Moving and lyrical, Khalifeh’s novel weaves religious and political symbolism into a story of love and loss. At its core is Ibrahim’s–the Palestinian’s–agonizing but unrelenting search for a home.
Prior to the fifteenth century, Granada, Spain, was a Muslim community. 
When the Castilians conquered the area, they brought with them the Inquisition. Muslim culture and literature were banned, and inhabitants were forced to convert.
This epic follows the fortunes of the Muslim family of Abu Jaafar, a well-respected leader and book printer. His two apprentices and the children of his deceased biological son make up the heart of the novel. Granada’s history is likely to be unfamiliar to American audiences. . . . However, once readers acclimate to the gentle rhythms of the story, they may well find it to be a page-turner. The language is rich and evocative, and the characters are engaging.”
Specters tells the story of Radwa and Shagar, two women born the same day. 
The narrative alternates between their childhoods, their work lives (one a professor of literature and the other of history), their personal relationships, and their respective books. With her novel’s structure, Ashour pays tribute to the Arab qareen (double or companion, and sometimes demon) and the ancient Egyptian ka, the spirit that is born with and accompanies an individual through life, and beyond.
This lively metafictional novel is a mix of genres: part autobiography, part oral history, part documentary, part fiction. As the narrative moves back and forth between Radwa’s novelSpecters and Shagar’s history Specters (about the massacre at Deir Yassin in April 1948), Ashour unites the projects of history and literature and blurs the boundaries between the personal and the political in one compellingly readable meditation on contemporary life in a fractured world.
Despite it’s having been published in five editions (three in Lebanon and two in Palestine), this book maintains its theoretical significance as a landmark work in its sixth edition, which has now been published by the ACRPS. 
The book’s value and relevance are only increased today in the midst of the Arab revolutions, which have restated the importance of the concept, effectiveness, and role of civil society.
The book discusses the idea of civil society and the historical conditions for its emergence, notably the separation of civil society from the state, as well as concepts of the nation, nationalism, citizenship and democracy. The book is primarily a theoretical work in which the author attempts to retrace the history of Western political thought in the context of the social shifts that have accompanied and affected its evolution. In addition, the book offers a critical deconstruction of the concept of civil society, after it had become widespread and over-used in daily writings, causing it to lose its explanatory value and critical effect, making it synonymous with the concept of the national society. Dr. Bishara lists the functions of civil society, which necessarily lead to democracy, arguing that civil society has a history that is linked to politics, the economy, and the evolution of the notions of society and state in the face of both “organic communities” and the tools of coercion employed by the state to establish and maintain its dominance. The author reaches the conclusion that civil society is an intellectual and historical process leading to full-fledged citizenship and genuine democracy.
This sixth edition also includes an expansive new introduction (400 pages long) by Dr. Bishara in which he recounts the history of the emergence of the idea of civil society in the Arab world, arguing that its appearance and impressive spread during the 1990s was a form of compensation for the chill afflicting the Arab intellectual at the time, with the Arab intelligentsia withdrawing from politics due to the retreat of leftist and nationalist ideologies. As a result, most of those who adopted this new concept came from the ranks of the left and the Arab nationalist movements. These evolutions took place alongside the collapse of the Soviet Union, the crisis that overtook the Arab world with the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. As these events pushed many intellectuals out of politics, some former leftists sought to reduce civil society to “non-governmental organizations”. These days, however, the intellectual has returned to the political arena with the eruption of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Arab intellectuals are engaging in the revolutionary act with their ideas, their public stands, and even their bodies. In light of all this, Dr. Bishara concludes that when it is devoid of politics and outside the context of the democratic struggle, civil society is in fact an abortion of its own historical essence.
On a different front, the book also focuses on the distinction between the nation (ummah) and nationalism, drawing the epistemological and methodological borders between the two concepts. In this respect, Dr. Bishara stresses the notion of the citizens’ nation, which is a nation beyond the nation-state borders, and a civil society domestically. As for citizenship, it surpasses cultural, ethnic, sectarian, and tribal identities, while nationalism is based on language. It is on these two bases that civil society can be built and established in the Arab world.
In the short term, the author expresses concern that the struggle against political regimes in the Arab world could become one over identities, an event that could fragment “the national bond”, preventing the formation of the citizens’ nation. He notes, for example, that in Yemen, civil society is advancing with confidence, but with great difficulty, by simultaneously distinguishing itself from the state, the tribe, and the military. In Libya, it appears that the notion of citizenship is facing a struggle on two fronts: against foreign intervention, which degrades national policy, and against the revival of tribalism and regionalism. Dr. Bishara also criticizes the boundless praise heaped on Arab youth, which resembles the odes sung by Arab intellectuals to civil society when they first discovered the concept. He argues that this flattery misguides Arab youth, presenting them as a political faction or a homogeneous political camp, neither of which conforms with reality.
A young Palestinian named Usama returns from working in the Gulf to support the resistance movement. 
His mission is to blow up buses transporting Palestinian workers into Israel.
Shocked to discover that many of his fellow citizens have adjusted to life under military rule, Usama exchanges harsh words with his friends and family. Despite uncertainty, he sets out to accomplish his mission … with disastrous consequences.
Originally published in Jerusalem, Wild Thorns was the first Arab novel to offer a glimpse of social and personal relations under Israeli occupation. Featuring unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, its deep sincerity, uncompromising honesty and rich emotional core plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.
Despite the Israeli authorities’ attempt to shut out aid workers and the media from the conflict zone, NORWAC (the Norwegian Aid Committee) succeeded in getting some of its envoys into the heart of Gaza City including two doctors: Erik Fosse and Mads Gilbert. For some time, the two were the only Western eyewitnesses in Gaza. 
This book is an account of their experience during sixteen harrowing days from 27 December 2008 to 12 January 2009. Each chapter covers just one day, as the reader follows the doctors’ journey through the ravaged city, treating local Palestinians and hearing their stories. Hailed by the influential Norwegian Newspaper Klassekampen as the ‘best book of 2009,’ Mads Gilbert’s and Erik Fosse’s shocking, yet sober account sheds much-needed light on this recent chapter of one of the most prolonged and complex conflicts of our time. Eyes In Gaza is translated from the Norwegian.
Gaza is the frontline in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and rarely out of the news, this book explores the daily lives of the people in the region, giving us an insight into what is at risk in each round of violence.
Ramzy Baroud tells his father’s fascinating story. Driven out of his village to a refugee camp, he took up arms and fought the occupation at the same time raising a family and trying to do the best for his children. Baroud’s vivid and honest account reveals the complex human beings; revolutionaries, great moms and dads, lovers, and comedians that make Gaza so much more than just a disputed territory.
Israel’s 2009 invasion of Gaza was a vicious act of aggression that left well over one thousand Palestinians dead and devastated the infrastructure of an already impoverished enclave.
In this searching examination of Israels policies, award-winning journalist Gideon Levy shows how the ground was prepared for the assault and documents its continuing effects. From 2005 – the year of Gaza’s liberation – through to 2009, he tracks Israels abandonment of the pretence of diplomacy in favour of a policy of provocation and raw military power, with the ultimate aim of denying Palestinians any chance of forming their own independent state.
and the Quartet of international powers for the democratic election of Hamas, Gaza has been transformed into the worlds largest open-air prison. From Gazan families struggling to cope with the random violence of Israels blockade and its targeted assassinations, to the machinations of legal experts and the continued connivance of the international community, every aspect of this ongoing tragedy is eloquently recorded and forensically analyzed. Levy’s powerful journalism shows how the brutality at the heart of Israels occupation of Palestine has found its most complete expression to date in the collective punishment of the residents of Gaza.
The Gaza Kitchen is a richly illustrated cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine and food heritage of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District—and that of the many refugees from elsewhere in Palestine who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. 
In summer 2010, authors Laila El-Haddad andMaggie Schmitt traveled the length and breadth of the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes presented in the book. They were also able to build on the extensive knowledge that Laila, herself a Palestinian from Gaza, had gained from family and friends throughout the years.
The 130 recipes presented in this book have all been thoroughly kitchen-tested. Amounts are presented using U.S.-style measures, and the authors suggest alternative ingredients and recipe adaptations for cooks working in the United States or other countries where some of the ingredients may not be easy to find. Numerous illustrations help readers understand how to perform the listed techniques—and what the finished product should look like!
But The Gaza Kitchen is not only a cookbook. A lot of other things happen in the kitchen as well as cooking: conversations, the re-telling of family histories, and the daily drama of surviving and creating spaces for pleasure in an embattled place. In this book, women and men from throughout Gaza tell their stories as they relate to cooking, farming, and the food economy: personal stories, family stories, and descriptions of the broader social and economic system in which they live.
When Laila and Maggie launched this project in 2009, they wrote:
Why do we want to talk about food and cooking?
Because food is the essence of the everyday. Beyond all the discourses, the positions and the polemics, there is the kitchen. And even in Gaza, that most tortured little strip of land, hundreds of thousands of women every day find ways to sustain their families and friends in body and spirit. They make the kitchen a stronghold against despair, and there craft necessity into pleasure and dignity.
Gaza has a rich food tradition and a unique cuisine combining Levantine and Egyptian elements. The history of its population can be traced through its recipes, which reflect the influence of exile from all over Palestine as well as a changing society and customs. A cookbook which brings together these recipes serves as testimony to this heritage and history.
What is more, today’s kitchens can tell us much about the difficult and paradoxical realities of Gaza after three years of unrelenting siege: which products are available and where they are coming from (tunnels, local agriculture, humanitarian relief), how cooks manage with extreme shortages of gas and electricity, how families reorganize to compensate for destroyed homes and near-universal joblessness. To spend a day with a Gazan woman doing the shopping and cooking is to understand the Palestinian reality from an entirely different – more material, more intimate – perspective. It is to appreciate the strength and endurance which allows these women every day to confront a hopeless situation and to create within it small spaces of grace, beauty and generosity.
Just World Books is honored to have been able to work with Maggie and Laila in the preparation of this unique contribution to the study of the world’s food heritage.
‘I’m convinced that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians would rather look to the future than be trapped in the past. We see that spirit in [Izzeldin Abuelaish]’ Barack Obama, keynote speech on the Middle East, 19 May 2011
Heart-breaking, hopeful and horrifying, I Shall Not Hate is a Palestinian doctor’s inspiring account of his extraordinary life, growing up in poverty but determined to treat his patients in Gaza and Israel regardless of their ethnic origin.
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