The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008. Bringing together writers from all corners of the globe, it aims to help Palestinians break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen their artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, 'the power of culture over the culture of power'.Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, is a collection of essays, poems and stories from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and courage in the most desperate of situations.Contributors: Susan Abulhawa, Suad Amiry, Victoria Brittain, Jehan Bseiso, Teju Cole, Molly Crabapple, Selma Dabbagh, Mahmoud Darwish, Najwan Darwish, Geoff Dyer, Yasmin El-Rifae, Adam Foulds, Ru Freeman, Omar Robert Hamilton, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Mohammed Hanif, Jeremy Harding, Rachel Holmes, John Horner, Remi Kanazi, Brigid Keenan, Mercedes Kemp, Omar El-Khairy, Nancy Kricorian, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jamal Mahjoub, Henning Mankell, Claire Messud, China Mieville, Pankaj Mishra, Deborah Moggach, Muiz, Maath Musleh, Michael Palin, Ed Pavlic, Atef Abu Saif, Kamila Shamsie, Raja Shehadeh, Gillian Slovo, Ahdaf Soueif, Linda Spalding, Will Sutcliffe, Alice WalkerWith messages from China Achebe, Michael Ondaatje and J. M. Coetzee

This anthology will help turn your intellectual understanding of oppression into an emotional one

Vorwort
Writers from Michael Palin to Claire Messud, Michael Ondaatje to Richard Ford have spent a week crossing military checkpoints to perform literary events across Palestine. Their words are now collected in a breathtakingly original book of new writing

Autorentext

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of Aisha, Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and the bestselling novel The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. Her collection of cultural and political essays, Mezzaterra, was published in 2004, as was her translation of I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti. She has been awarded the Blue Metropolis Literary Prize (in Montreal) and the Constantin Cavafis Award (in Cairo and Athens), and is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, for which she was awarded the Hay Medal for Festivals in 2017.

Ahdaf Soueif is also a journalist and her work is syndicated throughout the world. For the last five years she has been a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine, and throughout the 2011 uprisings in Cairo Adhaf Soueif reported front the ground for the Guardian, and appeared on television and radio. She lives in London and Cairo.

William Sutcliffe is the author of twelve novels, including the international bestseller Are You Experienced? and The Wall, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. He has written for adults, young adults and children, and has been translated into twenty-eight languages. His 2008 novel Whatever Makes You Happy is now a Netflix Original film starring Patricia Arquette, Felicity Huffman and Angela Bassett. It was released in August 2019 under the title Otherhood.

His latest novel, The Gifted, The Talented and Me, was described by The Times as 'dangerously funny' and by the Guardian as 'refreshingly hilarious'.

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and lives in Toronto. The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and was made into an Oscar-winning film directed by Anthony Minghella.Michael Palin was born in Sheffield in 1943. He was a founder member of the Monty Python team and has written and performed in numerous successful films and television series, including The Missionary, Time Bandits, A Private Function, A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends and GBH. In addition to the bestselling Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, he has written a number of books, notably Ripping Yarns with Terry Jones, and several children's books including The Mirrorstone, Small Harry and the Toothache Pills, Limericks and the Cyril stories. His first stage play, The Weekend, was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford before transferring to the Strand Theatre in London, 1994, with Richard Wilson in the lead role.China Miéville has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award (three times), the British Fantasy Award (twice), and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (four times). His novels include Perdido Street Station, King Rat, Un Lun Dun, The City & The City, Railsea and The Last Days of New Paris. He has also written a narrative history of the Bolshevik Revolution, October.Gillian Slovo is an author, journalist, playwright and the President of English Pen. Gillian has written 12 novels including Black Orchids and Red Dust, which won the RFI Temoin du Monde prize in France and was made into a film starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Her novel Ice Road was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction and her family memoir, Every Secret Thing, was an international bestseller. Her play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom , co-written for the Tricycle Theatre, has played in theatres around the world including New York and Washington DC. Her edited interviews with women politicians was put on as part of the Tricycle's 2010 Women Power and Politics Season. In 2009 she won an amnesty media award for her article on children in detention. She is a reviewer, opinion writer and in 2008 wrote a column for the South African newspaper, The Star.susan abulhawa was born to Palestinian refugees of the 1967 war. Mornings in Jenin, her first novel, became an international sensation when it was first published in 2010, with rights sold in thirty languages.Architect and writer Suad Amiry lives in Ramallah where she is director of the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation. She received the Italian Viareggio-Versilia Prize for Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries in 2004.Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio & Music Awards*.* She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.

Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.

Kamila Shamsie is the author of eight novels: In the City by the Sea (shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Kartography (also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction); A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; and Best of Friends, which was shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2023. Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award 2017, and won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in Londo…