Stranger in My Own Land
Palestine, Israel and One Family’s Story of Home
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them.
This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present – a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother’s death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into.
Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come ‘home’.
‘Jiryis’s account of the travails of the Palestinian cause celebrates the power of resilience and endurance.’ – Times Literary Supplement
‘[A] tour de force…beautifully written…this book eloquently conveys the urgency of transforming the toxic status quo into conditions that allow everyone to thrive as equals.’ – The Palestine Chronicle
‘Jiryis paints a vivid portrait of life for Palestinians in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.’ – Middle East Eye
Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer and editor who has written on life as a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. She contributed to Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller on fifty years of Israeli occupation, and Amputated Tongue, a Hebrew-language anthology of Palestinian literature.
