Autorentext

GHASSAN KANAFANI (1936-1972) was a Palestinian novelist, journalist, and political activist, born in Acre. Forced to flee during the Nakba, he lived and worked in Damascus, Kuwait, and finally Beirut, where his experience of exile deeply shaped his literature. His novels, including Men in the Sun and Returning to Haifa, documented the horrors of war and occupation, and he is widely credited with pioneering the concept of Palestinian "resistance literature." He was assassinated in Beirut in 1972 by a car bomb planted by Israeli Mossad, at the age of 36.

Klappentext

Translated into English for the first time after its publication in 1967, Ghassan Kanafani's On Zionist Literature makes an incisive analysis of the body of literary fiction written in support of the Zionist colonization of Palestine. Interweaving his literary criticism of works by George Eliot, Arthur Koestler, and many others with a historical materialist narrative, Kanafani identifies the political intent and ideology of Zionist literature, demonstrating how the myths used to justify the Zionist-imperialist domination of Palestine first emerged and were repeatedly propagated in popular literary works in order to generate support for Zionism and shape the Western public's understanding of it. The new preface by Anni Kanafani and an introduction by Steven Salaita place On Zionist Literature in its broader historical context and make a compelling case for its ongoing significance more than five decades since its original publication, illustrating the extent to which "Kanafani was a searing and incisive critic, at once generous in his understanding of emotion and form and unsparing in his assessment of politics and myth."