2025 Programmes

Raja Shehadeh

Raja Shehadeh

Raja Shehadeh is one of Palestine’s most eminent writers, as well as a prominent human rights lawyer and co-founder of the pioneering human rights organisation Al-Haq.

He has been widely decorated for writing that sheds light on the conflict in the Middle East, often through the lens of his own life. He won the Orwell Prize for Palestinian Walks and his National Book Award-shortlisted memoir We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I is a portrait of his complex father-son relationship during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights.

His latest book, Forgotten - co-written with his wife Penny Johnson - is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine, and an exploration of the complexities of commemoration in a fractured land.