When The Bulbul Stopped Singing: A Diary of Ramallah under Siege

(Paperback, Main)

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'Palestine's greatest prose writer' Observer

'Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise' Colm Toibin

Battered by repeated suicide bombs, the Israeli army invaded Palestine in April 2002 and held many of the principal towns, including Ramallah, under siege. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; there were Israeli soldiers on the rooftops; his mother was sick, and he couldn't cross town to help her.

Shehadeh - winner of the 2008 Orwell Prize and a finalist for the 2023 National Book Awards - kept a diary. This is an account of what it is like to be under siege: the terror, the frustrations, as well as the moments of poignant relief and reflection on the profound crisis gripping both Palestine and Israel.

Reviews

'Praise for Raja Shehadeh: Shehadeh writes with great clarity and simplicity, but no bitterness, more in sorrow than in anger about the unhappy history of his family and country' - Independent

'In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, his self-questioning and insistence on focusing on the experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi' - New York Times

'A buoy in a sea of bleakness' - Rachel Kushner

'Luminously clear-sighted ... By turns lyrical, witty and shrewd, Shehadeh is an excellent companion' - Prospect

Author Bio

Raja Shehadeh is Palestine's leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq. Shehadeh was a National Book Award finalist in 2023 and is the author of several acclaimed books published by Profile, including the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks. He lives in Ramallah.