Stranger In My Own Land: Palestine, Israel, and One Family's Story of Home: Caabu Book Launch with Fida Jiryis

6 Mar 2023 18:00 - 19:00

Caabu invites you to an online book launch: Stranger In My Own Land: Palestine, Israel, and One Family's Story of Home, with Fida Jiryis, who will discuss her new book, Stranger In My Own Land: Palestine, Israel, and One Family's Story of Home on Monday 6 March 2023 at 6pm (GMT UK time).

Register for this online briefing here.

Stranger In My Own Land: Palestine, Israel, and One Family's Story of Home published by Hurst Publishers can be purchased here. Books by Caabu speakers can be purchased here through Caabu's affiliate page on Bookshop.org. Caabu receives 10% of any purchase made as does an independent book shop.

When: Monday 6 March 2023, 18:00 (GMT, UK time).

Where: Online. Sign up for the discussion here.

The event will also be live-streamed on Caabu's Youtube channel which you can also subscribe to. Previous Caabu briefings and discussions can also be watched here and a recording of this event will be posted here afterwards also. Previous Caabu briefings can be watched in this playlist here.

Caabu has created an affiliate page on Bookshop. This means, that with any purchase through this site, 10% of the sale price will be sent to us and another 10% will go to support local bookshops. We think this is a great way to support Caabu's work and independent bookshops across the country. More details about it can be found here.

  • Buy other books from previous online Caabu briefings here and from physical events we've hosted here.
  • Titles written by Caabu board members and patrons can be found here, as can others written by those who have spoken at Caabu events here.

We hope you enjoy reading any of these titles, and supporting Caabu in the process.

You can sign up for the discussion here using your email address. Please note that sign up is a two part process. Once you have signed up with your email address, this will then be approved, and details will then be emailed to you ahead of the event. Please do check your inbox (including Junk and Clutter folders) for this email with the link to join the event on the day. 

Please register below AHEAD of time to join this online briefing. This makes it much more helpful to us: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqduGvqTsjE9ZN8TRWQfbjJoD_A2HbtUdR

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Fida Jiryis Caabu

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About the book:

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’.

About the speaker:

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian author living in Ramallah. She grew up in Lebanon and Cyprus, the daughter of Palestinian intellectual and leader, Sabri Jiryis. As her family fled Israel’s oppression and wars, Fida's life has spanned the full spectrum of the Palestinian people’s forced fragmentation: in Israel, the West Bank and the diaspora. Her writings include several collections of Arabic short stories; a contribution to the book, Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller; and Ha-Cluv (The Cage), a Hebrew translation of her short stories published this year. Her most recent book, Stranger in My Own Land, describes her and her family’s remarkable life journey which is, in many respects, the story of Palestine.

You can read an excerpt of the book in The Guardian (also available in podcast) and another excerpt in +972 Magazine.

She Tweets: @FJiryis.

Caabu is a not-for-profit cross-party organisation whose mission is to work for a British Middle East policy that promotes conflict resolution, human rights and civil society in the Arab world through informed debate and mutual understanding. Caabu is one of the most active NGOs working on the Middle East in British parliament since its establishment in 1967. From then on Caabu has assumed an active advocacy, educational and media role.

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