The best new books on Palestine, straight to your door.
There has never been as much work on Palestine published in English as there is today.
The PalFest Bookshelf is a curated subscription that delivers key books, along with bespoke extras, straight to your door.
Subscribers receive six shipments a year – every other month, with book club conversations – both online and irl – offered in the months in-between.
Bookshelf members give critical support to daring new publishing on Palestine – crucial in this moment of increased censorship.
April & May
In 2015, we were honored to welcome Molly Crabapple to the Palestine Festival of Literature. She toured the West Bank and ‘48 with the festival and wrote a deeply affecting dispatch for Vice News from Gaza. When she returned home, she began excavating her family’s history and her great-grandfather’s involvement with the Jewish Bund — a revolutionary movement that was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist that reached its zenith in interwar Europe.
Now, 11 years later, she is about to publish Here Where We Live Is Our Country, an epic history of the Jewish movement that refused Zionism’s pressure to colonize and subjugate another people. It’s been largely erased from history, Molly argues, because of its opposition to Zionism — and her new book is an attempt to ensure it’s not forgotten.
Subscribers will also receive this exclusive artwork postcard, designed by Molly for the PalFest Bookhself.
Artwork postcard by Molly Crabapple featuring her illustration above an election flyer from Volkovsyk in 1938: “The Jewish masses must clearly and openly declare: We are not foreigners! We will not leave! We will fight for our freedom and rights, together with Polish workers and peasants. And if the Zionists … raise a hand to hinder our struggle, then we will kick them off the Jewish street.”
2025 Bundles
Our final selection for 2025 was a novel just published in so-called Australia by Randa Abdel-Fattah, and currently exclusively available internationally here.
With a focus on two of today’s most contested fields, academia and the media, Discipline tallies the price we all pay when those with privilege choose to remain silent. As Israel’s bombardment of Gaza intensifies into the final weeks of Ramadan, academic Ashraf and young journalist Hannah must reckon with their choices, values and places in their communities. Will they be prepared to make sacrifices in the pursuit of what is right?
As a special extra with this bundle, we include a Bookshelf-exclusive printing of Abdaljawad Omar’s essay ‘The Anxiety of Liberation.
Palestine is Everywhere is an anthology of new writing brilliantly assembled by Skye Arundhati Thomas and Edwin Nasr which features, among essays, poetry, photography and reportage, letters from prison written by PalFest author Alaa Abd el-Fattah – who has just been released after twelve years.
As a free extra, this bundle also contains A Year on the Abyss of Genocide, the diaries of Mahmoud al-Shaer, a writer and editor who played a central role developing young writers’ voices in Gaza, before his life’s work was destroyed by Israel. He remains caught in Gaza, and collects his diaries published on his GoFundMe.
please note, A Year on the Abyss of Genocide is not available in North America at this time
48kg is the debut poetry collection from Batool Abu Akleen, a Palestinian poet and translator from Gaza City. 48kg is a bilingual assembly of forty-eight poems. Each work accounts for a single kilogram; a body’s mass; a testament to a sieged city; a vivid and visceral voicing of the personal and the public in the midsts of unspeakable violence.
Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine by Adam Hanieh, Rob Knox and Rafeef Ziadah is a succinct and far-reaching critique of the socio-economic and political forces that sustain the Israeli settler-colonial project. An essential introduction for anyone looking to understand what Palestine reveals about the world – and what it demands of us today.
no longer available in the US
This landmark collection of poetry is a love letter to Palestinian ancestors, their descendants, and their land, to all anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, to a history that will never be forgotten, and to a future in which there thrives a free Palestine.
Accompanying it is the healthcare issue of the New York War Crimes, published by Writers Against the War on Gaza. This issue contains reports, analyses, testimonies, poems, and songs of resistance, altogether reflecting the role of Gaza’s medical workers as a bulwark against death and despair.
Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine, translated by Hazem Jamjoum. Accompanied by a special printing of the original PLO edition of Anni Kanafani’s tribute to her late husband after his assassination by Israel, plus a postcard of artwork by Ghassan Kanafani. Available while stock lasts.
While stock lasts, purchase the first PalFest Bookshelf selection: Mohammed El-Kurd’s non-fiction debut, Perfect Victims, accompanied by a postcard of the cover artwork by Gazan artist Maisara Baroud.
“This curation of books on Palestine and ongoing conversations with writers is such a great idea. An invaluable resource to guide our thinking and to connect us to one another.”
““The Palestine Festival of Literature does the important work of connecting writers of all backgrounds with the land and people of Palestine. This latest project - a curated collection of works by some of our most preeminent Palestinian writers – is an extension of that undertaking. It continues their mission of marrying the great power of literature with the great fight of our time: the eradication of apartheid in general, and the freedom of Palestinians in particular. This is a much needed effort from one of the preeminent literary organizations of our time.””
““What a necessary and timely gift to all of us! The PalFest Bookshelf features a curated selection of urgent and beautiful books written by some of the most talented writers, and sends them directly to you. It feels like a ray of hope.””
““Given the constraints of time how to choose between all the books about Palestine that are out in the world? Enter the good people of PalFest whose qualities of political wisdom, emotional intelligence, reliability and very good taste make them the perfect candidates to do the choosing for you. And given their reach and creative flair the ‘bonus features’ are likely to be extraordinary. Sign me up.””