Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life

Front Cover
Macmillan, Apr 29, 2008 - Biography & Autobiography - 584 pages

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

A teacher, a scholar, a philosopher, and an eyewitness to history, Sari Nusseibeh is one of our most urgent and articulate authorities on the conflict in the Middle East. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at the Hebrew University through his appointment by Yasir Arafat to administer the Arab Jerusalem, he has held fast to the principles of freedom and equality for all, and his story dramatizes the consequences of war, partition, and terrorism as few other books have done. Once Upon a Country brings rare depth and compassion to the story of his country.

 

Contents

Prologue A Fairy Tale
3
One The Key
15
Two The PanArab Nation
21
Three Promises Promises
25
Four The Herods Gate Committee
38
Five The Pepper Tree
57
Six A Grapevine
85
Seven Smashing Idols
104
Twenty Interrogation
290
Twentyone Ramle Prison
314
Twentytwo Madrid
336
Twentythree A Shadow Government
353
Twentyfour Oslo
364
Twentyfive The Disappearance
383
Twentysix Porcupines and Roosters
400
Twentyseven Holy of Holies
420

Eight Sunflower
129
Nine Monticello
138
Ten The Lemon Tree Café
151
Eleven The Salon
171
Twelve Military Order 854
184
Thirteen Masquerade
202
Fourteen Murder on the Via Dolorosa
215
Fifteen Faisal Husseini
229
Sixteen Annex Us
235
Seventeen Sticks and Stones
248
Eighteen The Exorcism
264
Nineteen A Declaration of Independence
280
Twentyeight The Possessed
428
Twentynine Allies
444
Thirty Checkmate
456
Thirtyone The Iron Fist
478
Thirtytwo The Tigers
497
Thirtythree The Perfect Crime
510
Epilogue A Night Journey
528
Notes
537
Acknowledgments
543
Index
545
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher, was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chief representative in Jerusalem from 2001 to 2002, in which role he advocated a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the president of and a professor at Al-Quds University, the Arab University of Jerusalem. Nusseibeh was educated at Oxford and Harvard, and was a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard for 2004–05. He is the author of two previous books. Anthony David contributed to Once Upon a Country from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.