Palestinian literature is not the same thing as literature about Palestine. The list below is books by Palestinians — about exile, return, occupation, refusal, the camps, the village before 1948, and the diaspora that has carried the literature into the world.
Men in the Sun
The foundational text. Three refugees in the empty water tank of a lorry across the desert.
Returning to Haifa
A Palestinian couple visits the house in Haifa they left in 1948 — and meets the family that has lived in it since.
Memory for Forgetfulness
The diary of a single August day in besieged Beirut, 1982. The major prose memoir of Palestinian exile.
I Saw Ramallah
After thirty years away, the poet Mourid Barghouti crosses the bridge back into the West Bank.
Wild Thorns
Life under occupation in the West Bank, by the major Palestinian woman novelist.
Gate of the Sun
A Lebanese writing the most ambitious novel of the Palestinian camps in Lebanon.
A Mountainous Journey
Memoir by the great Palestinian woman poet of the twentieth century, born in Nablus before the Nakba.
Mornings in Jenin
The most-translated contemporary diaspora Palestinian novel, written in English.