Books by Raja and Penny Johnson

Forgotten

Profile Books, February 2025

From two leading writers and thinkers on Palestine: a profound meditation on memory and what we choose to memorialise

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine – now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories – and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
From ancient city ruins to the Nabi ‘Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased – and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.
In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba – the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians – but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.

What Does Israel Fear from Palestine?

Profile Books, 2024

A searing reflection on the failures of Israel to treat Palestine and Palestinians as equals, as partners on the road to peace instead of genocide.

Since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Nakba (or ‘disaster’ as the Palestinians call it), there have been many opportunities to move towards peace and equality between Palestine and Israel – after the Six-Day War in 1967, the Oslo Agreement and even the 7 October 2023 War. Each opportunity has been rejected by Israel, which is why life is unbearable in the West Bank now and there is genocide in Gaza. This book explores what went wrong again and again, and why. And how it could still be different.

It is human nature to feel prejudice. But in this haunting meditation on Palestine and Israel, Shehadeh suggests that this does not mean the two nations cannot live together to their mutual benefit and co-existence.

In graceful, devastatingly observed prose, this is a fresh reflection on the conflict in a time of great need.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir

Profile Books, 2022
National Book Awards Finalist

A subtle psychological portrait of the author’s relationship with his father during the twentieth-century battle for Palestinian human rights.

Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.

A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognise his father’s courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja’s own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.

This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.