The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine: Background, Details, and Analysis

A radical analysis of Palestinian resistance from one of their most influential voices.Revisit Ghassan Kanafani's pivotal text in a new English edition. Kanafani presents a concrete analysis of the mass uprisings against Zionism, and for independence from British colonialism, taking place in Palestine from 1936 to 1939. With a methodical yet illustrative approach, Kanafani examines the economic, political, social, and cultural conditions that contributed to, and limited, the anti-colonial struggle in this period.

Translated by Hazem Jamjoum, with an introduction from Layan Sima Fuleihan and an afterword from Maher Charif

GHASSAN KANAFANI (1936-1972) was a Palestinian novelist, journalist, and political activist, born in Acre. Forced to flee during the Nakba, he lived and worked in Damascus, Kuwait, and finally Beirut, where his experience of exile deeply shaped his literature. His novels, including Men in the Sun and Returning to Haifa, documented the horrors of war and occupation, and he is widely credited with pioneering the concept of Palestinian "resistance literature." He was assassinated in Beirut in 1972 by a car bomb planted by Israeli Mossad, at the age of 36.

LAYAN SIMA FULEIHAN is a popular educator and organizer. She is the Education Director of The People's Forum and an editor of 1804 Books in New York City.

HAZEM JAMJOUM is a candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy in History and Middle Eastern Studies degree at New York University. His first literary translation of Maya Abu al-Hayyat's La Ahad Ya'rif Zumrat Damih received PEN America's nomination to the New York State Council for the Arts.

MAHER CHARIF is Head of the Research Department at the Institute for Palestine Studies, Associate Researcher at the French Institute for the Near East, and Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Saint Joseph University.