Strangers in the House

Description

Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself. In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. In Strangers in the House, Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile - of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is the founder of a pioneering human rights organisation called Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. His most recent book, Palestinian Walks, won the 2008 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.

A sad, dignified book. Shehadeh writes with great clarity and simplicity, but no bitterness, more in sorrow than in anger about the unhappy history of his family and country. * Independent * A remarkable human document that explains better than a hundred political treatises why there is still no peace in the Middle East -- Amos Elon A book with a huge sensory impact * Financial Times * Its intimate portrayal of one family's history offers important insights into the wider Palestinian story -- Stephen Howe * New Statesman * Distinctive and truly impressive * Economist *