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A Palestinian Memoir
by Raja Shehadeh
A subtle psychological portrait of the author's relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights.
Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.
A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognize his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.
This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.
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"Palestinian attorney and human rights activist Shehadeh (Where the Line Is Drawn) movingly blends the personal and political in this heartfelt take on his complex relationship with his lawyer father, Aziz...This poignant memoir will resonate with many, whatever their positions on the political conflict at its center." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"{T}the text is poignant and engaging...A well-established Palestinian voice fashions a loving portrayal of the unsung achievements of his activist father." - Kirkus Reviews
"Absolutely gripping…Shehadeh's writing is clear and pared-back; it wears its power lightly. But his masterly, remorseless selection and accumulation of detail builds an unanswerable case against Palestine's historic and current oppressors." - The Guardian (UK)
"[A] highly readable memoir…impressively comprehensive…thought-provoking." - The Observer (UK)
"A striking story of loss, heartbreak, and political perfidy." - Irish Times (UK)
"Slim but powerful—rich in recent historical detail with a poignant personal trauma threading in and out of it. This is a Palestinian memoir that will endure." - Church Times (UK)
"This personal and gripping memoir, which is partly the conversation that Raja Shehadeh wishes he could have had with his murdered father, is also the touching untold story of Aziz Shehadeh's unrelenting resistance to the British perfidy, Hashemite tyranny, and Israeli colonization that have tormented the Palestinians since 1917." —Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
This information about We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Raja Shehadeh is Palestine's leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. Shehadeh is the author of several acclaimed books including Strangers in the House, Occupation Diaries, and Palestinian Walks, which won the prestigious Orwell Prize.
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