Lila Abu-Lughod, the Palestinian-American professor of anthropology at Columbia whose graceful and perfect telling of her father’s exile and return I found so stunning the other night, amended her comment to me that her book Nakba has not been reviewed. "The interesting thing
is that the book has been picked up by various Palestine websites and
magazines," she said, but not in academic or American general-interest publications.
Here’s a review on H-net. Here’s a review at the Institute for Middle East Understanding. Here’s a review in This Week in Palestine. Here’s a review by Gershom Gorenberg, who’s much more interested in Benny Morris.
To repeat myself, it is tragic that the media, and for its part Columbia University, have not brought such a serious, sensitive and reserved writer to public attention. When we are having the great media bath of Israel’s 60th birthday later this month, I would like to see her on Charlie Rose and hear her on Terry Gross.
