Rift in Time [Paperback]

Raja Shehadeh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2010

Raja Shehadeh is the most celebrated Palestinian writer working today. To his surprise, when researching his family history, he discovered a great uncle who had also been a writer entangled with the authorities, and who, like Raja, had dedicated his life to the freedom of the Palestinian people. Najib was a journalist and romantic living in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. When he voiced his opposition to Ottoman participation in the First World War, a death sentence was put on his head. So he fled, living on the run and off the land for nearly three years. The quest for Najib, the details of his life, and the route of his great escape consumed Raja for two years. As he traces Najib's footsteps, he discovers that today it would be impossible to flee the cage that Palestine has become. "A Rift in Time" is a family memoir, but it is also a reflection on how Palestine - in particular the disputed Jordan Rift Valley - has been transformed. Most of Palestine's history and that of its people is buried deep in the ground: whole villages have disappeared and names have been erased from the map. Yet by seeing the bigger picture of the landscape and the unending struggle for freedom as Raja does, it is still possible to look towards a better future, free from Israeli or Ottoman oppression.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights Al-Haq. He is the author of several acclaimed books including Strangers in the House and When the Bulbul Stopped Singing and the winner of the 2007 Orwell Prize for Palestinian Walks (all Profile).

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Profile Books (August 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846683300
• ISBN-13: 978-1846683305
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #485,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Complaint Worth Repeating, November 27, 2010

By 

Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rift in Time (Paperback)

A COMPLAINT WORTH REPEATING
I beg forgiveness for stating my first reaction to Raja Shehadeh's secondd book
of hiking memoirs, this one with the emphasis provided by the desire to retrace
the steps of a respected forbearer: We have been through this before. I had
attended the author's reading in East Jerusalem and had my autographed copy for
keepsake. Especially as a fellow involved Palestinian who reads on daily basis
many a pained statement of our loss at the hands of the Zionist colonialist
project, I was tempted to put the book aside. Except that the tale of Raja's
legendary Ottoman uncle was compelling enough for me to keep on reading. Its
setting in Galilee and the adjacent environs of the upper Rift Valley kept me
going. After all, my own facination with Galilee and committment to its native
residents had launched me as an author with my "A Doctor in Galilee: The Life
and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel" thus, not unlike Raja, switching careers from a physician to a writer.

As I followed Raja and his wife Penny on their meanderings in and out of
Galilee, his frequent asides about our loss as Palestinians and about the
Zionists' well-planned and mercilessly executed dislodging of our people by
diliberate force and geographic fragmentation, the elimination of their cultural
and archeological heritage, and the spacial confinement and physical control of
those who remained gained in freshness and legitimacy with repetition. It
started with the bit of information about Najib Nassar, Raja's Ottoman uncle,
being the first Palestinian writer to address the potential threat of
the Zionist colonialist project to our people's future and continued clear through to the
end of the narrative that I managed to get through by the end of the night of
the same day I had started it: 'The best heir of the best forbearer' as we say
in Arabic, I had to admit with tears in my eyes as Raja stands at his great
great uncle's grave in Nazareth.

I was particularly taken by the artfully intermixed narrative of Raja's own
present day nature walks with that of the forced flight of his predecessor into
the wilderness: The two accounts are nearly seamlessly interwoven, so much so
that I found the repeated assertions of the similarities between the two
protagonists in thought and predilictions perhaps unnecessary, even though I
found myself equally often thinking how much resemblance I also had to the two.
The only part that I was surprized to read when I reached it was about Najib's
second wife being the Granddaughter of the Grand Bahai, founder of the Bahai faith. I would have baited the reader with a hint about it very early in the book.

And a second artful tactic that Raja Shahadeh uses as if it were the most normal of practices is the mixing of the intimate with the public and the general: Personal and family affairs are brought casually into focus to be transcended at will to historical events and world affairs. Had I not been open to similar villification I would have accused the auther of slight of hand magic. But then again, the focus of the whole account is family centered while it is the entire world, particularly the West, that is Raja's target readership and potentially his accused perpetrators of neglect if not agression against the Palestinian people. Hence it is only natural that Raja zooms in and out of focusing at homes and family life in Ramallah, Haifa, Nazareth and Eyn-Anoub rendering their evident humanity accessible to his world audience.

Also for the non-Palestinian there is much more to savor: the reflective pauses about the human condition at large, about nature, about the geology, the fauna and
flora of Galilee, Palestine and the Rift Valley, and particularly about
understanding the basic nature of Israel's agressive pursuit of the Zionist
dream of a Jewish state west of the Jordan River. And, yes, indeed the
repetitive message in the enlightening discourse woven around the record of
Raja's and his Ottoman uncle's nature walks, one compelled by his Ottoman and
the other by his Israeli persuers, is worthy of repeating to the wider world
again and again. We will not be silenced by the world's inattentiveness.

Hatim Kanaaneh, MD, MPH
Author of 'A Doctor in Galilee: the Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in
Israel', Pluto Press, 2008
Active Blog:[...]

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars People in Rift, February 26, 2011

By 

Clive J. Payne (Lucerne - Switzerland) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rift in Time (Paperback)

A book proving the stupidity of 'men in power' who made decisions that were totally unjust. Until these decisions are reversed we will never alas see a lasting peace in the lands that were stolen from the Palestine People.