Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased - and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.
In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba - the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians - but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.
Reviews
Slim but profound ... Part travelogue, part historical recounting ... Perhaps one of the more complicated realities that Shehadeh and Johnson wrestle with is not just Israel's hand in erasing Palestinian history, but Palestine's own role ― New Statesman
Praise for Rajah Shehadeh: In his moral clarity and baring of the heart ... Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi ― New York Times
A buoy in a sea of bleakness ― Rachel Kushner
Palestine's greatest prose writer ― Observer
Profoundly personal as well as historically significant ... A quiet and deeply felt book ― Hisham Matar ― The New York Times
Praise for Companions in Conflict: 'Insightful, surprising, and moving ― Kamila Shamsie
