It may be quite correct to assume that most poets and novelists could not lead such a perilous expedition but then that is not their role. Instead their task is to write and in doing so teach, inform, enlighten and entertain. A role beautifully fulfilled in this fine collection of new Palestinian writing on exile and home.
In these grittily poetic stories, Palestinian writers imaginatively reclaim what has been lost.
Wry, candid, poignant, Seeking Palestine is a tribute to a people who no matter how displaced and dispossessed remain nevertheless determined.
Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home, edited by Penny Johnson and Raja Shehadeh, is a unique collection of writing and images by artists coming from a variety of different disciplines, from academics in the social and political sciences, to poets, award-winning fiction and nonfiction writers, the writers of bestsellers as well as visual artists. It is a motley variety of styles and approaches with an unwaveringly high quality of writing throughout, a credit to the editors as well as the contributors themselves. This is an extraordinarily frank, fresh and unsentimental assessment of what Palestinians are and have become. It is not only a testimony as to the strength, dedication and sticking power of Palestinian people, but also of the writers themselves.