Men In The Sun And Other Palestinian StoriesÂ
(Collected by Sulafa Hijjawi, Written 1962-1972)
As a way to commemorate Thursday’s upcoming Revolutionary Revue: Palestinian Liberation Cinema, from Epoch to Exile, Write Brain TV is presenting a special TRIPLE DROP of some of the most revolutionary and beautiful works of prose and poetry to come out of Palestine in the last half-century!Â
This entry is a collection of short stories, Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani, offering a look at the writing of the legendary novelist, journalist, teacher, and activist. As a major proponent for Palestinian self-determination and resistance — and a spokesperson for the PFLP — Kanafani was and remains highly-respected and widely-read by revolutionaries and academics alike. Apartheid Israel saw his growing influence as a threat early on and he soon became a target in their continued goal to destroy not only the people of Palestine, but their art & cultural identity. The most known entry that earns the book’s title concerns three Palestinian refugees forced to hide in a hot tanker’s trunk to be smuggled into Kuwait. Aspiring for a better life free from Israel’s terror, they die in the heat after hours of the driver being interrogated & asked for paperwork in an almost Kafkaesque twist the perfectly communicates the pain & silence of the Gaza experience. He would be martyred in a 1972 car bomb by Mossad, but his legacy lives on even to this day, being one of the first Palestinian writers to shatter the stranglehold & blockade seeping into universities and the public consciousness worldwide.
