Strangers in the House - by Raja Shehadeh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This "is not a political book," Anthony Lewis writes in his foreword. "Yet in a hundred different ways it is political.... Shehadeh shatters the stereotype many Americans have of Palestinians. Hath not a Palestinian senses, affections, passions?" This revealing memoir of a father-son relationship, the first o its kind by a Palestinian living in the occupied territories, is set against the backdrop of Middle East hostilities and more than thirty years of life under military occupation.

Three years after his family was driven from the coastal city of Jaffa in 1948, Raja Shehadeh was born in the provincial town of Ramallah, in the rural hills of the West Bank. His early childhood was marked by his family's sense of loss and impermanence, vividly evoked by the glittering lights "on the other side of the hill."

Growing up "in the shadow of home," he was introduced early to political conflict. He witnessed the numerous arrests of his father, Aziz Shehadeh, who, in 1967, was the first Palestinian to advocate a peaceful, two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He predicted that if peace were not acheived, what remained of the Palestinian homeland would be taken away, bit by bit, through Israeli settlement. Ostracized by his fellow Arabs and disillusioned by the failure of either side to recognize his prophetic vision, Aziz retreated from politics. He was murdered in 1985.

Strangers in the House offers a moving description of the daily lives of those who have chosen to remain on their land. It is also the family drama of a difficult relationship between an idealistic son and his politically active father complicated by the arbitrary humiliation of the "occupier's law."

Review Quotes

"Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy, and wise." -- Colm Tóibín

"A moving and heartfelt document that captures the rage and despair of lives stunted by occupation." -- Washington Post

"Unusually honest, beautifully written." -- New York Times Book Review

"Distinctive and truly impressive." -- The Economist

"A stunning autobiography ... a profoundly moving testimony to modern Palestinian life, a more powerful explanation of the Middle Eastern crisis than dozens of lectures and pages of newspaper articles." -- The Daily Star (Beirut)

" A remarkable human document that explains better than a hundred political treatises why there is still no peace in the Middle East." -- Amos Elon

About the Author

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.