Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948-1968

Ghassan Kanafani’s remarkable extended essay Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation, 1948–1968 is an unyielding act of cultural and political endurance. Writing in the wake of Israel’s devastating territorial expansion in 1967, Kanafani elaborates his theory of resistance literature and offers a visceral account of life under occupation. Translated for the first time into English by one of the greatest living translators from Arabic to English, Tarif Khalidi, Kanafani’s essay offers one of the sharpest social and political analyses of life in Palestine in this early period of occupation.

In the two decades following the Nakba, Palestinian writers undertook the gruelling task of advancing a cultural struggle to protect their language, culture, and heritage. In addition to Kanafani’s groundbreaking essay, the book includes a selection of poetry, prose, and dramatic writing curated by Ghassan Kanafani himself. Alongside writing from Mahmoud Darwish, Hanna Abu Hanna, and Samih al-Qasim, among many others, Kanafani’s essay and the accompanying pieces stand as a defiant declaration of cultural survival in the wake of Israeli expansion.