Overview

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.""

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Reviews

""Jiryis's account of the travails of the Palestinian cause celebrates the power of resilience and endurance."" -- ""Times Literary Supplement (London)"" ""This wrenching and inspiring tale of violence and courageous resistance, told through the eyes of a remarkable Palestinian family, vividly portrays a living example of what Adam Smith memorably called 'the savage injustice of the Europeans.'"" -- "" Noam Chomsky, New York Times bestselling author""

Author Information

Fida Jiryis is a 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. Dina Pearlman was raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, and went on to attend Carnegie Mellon University. Based in New York City, this actress, stand-up comic, and Audie Award-nominated narrator of over 300 audiobooks is best known for her appearances in Sex and the City (as Ruby Rosen, jeweler extraordinaire) and several Spike Lee films, notably Bamboozled in the role of slick network TV consultant Myrna Goldfarb. In HBO's Bad Education, Dina portrayed Wendy, a member of the doomed Roslyn Board of Ed frantically attempting to cover up missing funds, and Gina in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade, a sun-block-obsessed mom pulling partygoers aside to apply and re-apply. Dina is recurring on The Good Fight Season 5 as the lawsuit-averse rule-follower Katherine from Human Resources.

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