The CounterText interview : Raja Shehadeh

Abstract

How does it feel to walk, and to write, through a ‘vanishing landscape’ and its terrain of aftermaths without resolution? In this CounterText Interview Norbert Bugeja speaks to Raja Shehadeh – a voice for whom living through contingent afterworlds, and their attendant anxieties, is both a recognisable condition and one that sustains his writing as an ongoing counter-narrative. Raja Shehadeh is a writer and a lawyer who founded the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. He is the author of several books on international law, human rights, and the Middle East, including Occupier's Law (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1985) and From Occupation to Interim Accords (Kluwer Law International, 1997). His literary books include Strangers in the House (Profile Books, 2002), Occupation Diaries (Profile Books, 2012), A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle (Profile Books, 2010), Language of War, Language of Peace (Profile Books, 2015), and Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape (Profile Books, 2007) which won the 2008 Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing. He has co-edited, with Penny Johnson, Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Exile and Home (Olive Branch Press, 2013), and Shifting Sands: The Unravelling of the Old Order in the Middle East (Profile Books, 2015). His latest book is Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine (Profile Books, 2018). He has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Granta, and other publications.