We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I

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Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.

A subtle psychological portrait of the author's relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights 'Profoundly personal as well as historically significant ... In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi' - Hisham Matar, New York Times Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship. A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father's courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja's own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably. This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

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