S7 Ep. 5: Shir Alon and Joseph Farag On How Palestinian and Israeli Literature Has Handled the Ongoing Conflict

In the wake of the recent violence in Palestine and Israel, the show returns to an interview taped in June 2021 with scholars Shir Alon and Joseph Farag, who join co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss how Palestinian and Israeli writers have written about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Farag talks about the evolution of the portrayal of the Palestinian self in literature throughout history, as well as some of the themes and writers discussed in his book, Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story. Alon explains how the unprocessed trauma of the history of massacre and expulsion of Palestinians seems to stage an appearance in Israeli literature every decade. She also talks about Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom, Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, and Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode is produced by Andrea Tudhope and Anne Kniggendorf.

Selected readings:

Shir Alon

Static: Labor, Temporality, and Literary Form in Middle Eastern Modernisms (forthcoming book)

“The Ongoing Nakba and the Grammar of History,” LA Review of Books

“No One to See Here: Genres of Neutralization and the Ongoing Nakba”

“Gendering the Arab-Jew: Feminism and Jewish Studies After Ella Shohat”

Joseph Farag

Palestinian Literature in Exile Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story

Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: ‘Palestinian Literature and Film’

Others

Updated links:

An Open Letter in Support of Adania Shibli From More Than 350 Writers, Editors, and Publishers, Literary Hub

“Tension Over the Israel-Hamas War Casts a Pall Over Frankfurt Book Fair,” by Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times

The LiBeraturpreis 2023 (press release by Litprom)

"We want to make Jewish and Israeli voices especially visible at the book fair" | Frankfurter Buchmesse

“Palestinian voices ‘shut down’ at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors,” The Guardian

Original links:

Amos Oz 

David Grossman

Facing the Forests by A. B. Yehoshua

Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar

The Old New Land (Altneuland) by Theodor Herzl

Men in the Sun, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, and All That's Left to You: A Novella and Other Stories by Ghassan Kanafani 

"A Lover from Palestine," "ID Card," and many others by Mahmoud Darwish

The Ship by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Wild Thorns and Passage to the Plaza by Sahar Khalifeh

Eye of the Mirror and A Balcony Over the Fakihani by Liana Badr

Nathan Alterman

Funeral at Noon by Yeshayahu Koren

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Dolly City by Orly Castel-Bloom

The Sound of Our Steps by Ronit Matalon

Waltz with Bashir (film) by Ari Folman

The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi 

Divine Intervention, The Time that Remains, and It Must Be Heaven (films) by Elia Suleiman 

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