Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative

"Extraordinary and amazingly erudite. Hammad shows how art and especially literature can be much, much more revealing than political writing." --Rashid Khalidi, New York Times bestselling author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

From the award-winning author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost comes an outstanding essay on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad's seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of human history. Profound and moving, Hammad writes from within the moment, shedding light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Recognizing the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis by one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and a foremost writer of fiction in the world today.

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. The Parisian won a Palestine Book Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree and named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Enter Ghost won the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, among other prizes. The winner of the Plimpton Prize for Fiction and an O. Henry Prize, she has been awarded literary fellowships from the Cullman Center, the Lannan Foundation, and the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination.