Voices of the Nakba

Diana Allan and contributors Salman Abu Sitta, Lena Jayyusi and Mahmoud Zeidan launch Voices of the Nakba (Pluto Press, 2021) which won an English Pen Award this year. Hear about the living history of Palestine as contributors tell the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

In the 1948 war more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were violently expelled from their homes by Zionist militias. The legacy of the Nakba – which translates to ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe’ – lays bare the violence of the ongoing Palestinian plight. Voices of the Nakba collects the stories of first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, documenting a watershed moment in the history of the modern Middle East through the voices of the people who lived through it. The interviews, with commentary from leading scholars of Palestine and the Middle East, offer a vivid journey into the history, politics and culture of Palestine, defining Palestinian popular memory on its own terms in all its plurality and complexity.

This event is co-presented withPluto Press.

This event is part of the public programme public programme accompanying the exhibition Stateless Heritage by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti. The programme is supported by IASPIS.

Salman Abu Sitta is founder and President of Palestine Land Society, London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine’s land and People. He is the author of six books on Palestine including the compendium Atlas of Palestine 1917- 1966, the Atlas of the Return Journey and over 300 papers and articles on Palestine.

Diana Allanis Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of International Development Studies at McGill University, Montreal and a Canada Research Chair in the Anthropology of Living Archives. She is a filmmaker and the co-founder of the Nakba Archive.

Lena Jayyusi is Professor Emeritus of Communication and Media at Zayed University. Her publications are interdisciplinary, addressing topics media and cultural studies, film and visuality, including Palestinian memory and narrative, oral history, national identity and citizenship and discourses of international law.

Mahmoud Zeidan is a Palestinian refugee born in Ayn el Hilwa camp in Lebanon. An education and human rights specialist, he has gained extensive experience in oral history with Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian refugees. Mahmoud co-founded the Nakba Archive and Lens on Lebanon, a grassroots documentary initiative.