Forgotten

A profound meditation on memory and the preservation of Palestinian heritage, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.

Forgotten uncovers the 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 the 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 memorialized, 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.

Raja Shehadeh is one of Palestine’s leading writers. 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 Palestinian Walks, which won the prestigious Orwell Prize, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? and A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle.

Penny Johnson is a founding member of the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and has published articles and edited a number of important books on Palestine. She is also a contributing editor to Jerusalem Quarterly and the author of Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine.