Translated as ‘catastrophe’, this date refers to the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in Palestinian country and the violent mass displacement of Palestinians.
The Nakbah devastated Palestine’s literary and cultural institutions, effectively dismantling the centers of intellectual life and erasing the literary landscapes tied to them. Nevertheless, several key elements that arose during these initial years of occupation continued to shape Palestinian literature throughout the twentieth century (reference).
After the 1948 Nakba shattered historic Palestine into separate zones of Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptian control, Palestinian literature was profoundly reshaped by dispossession, fragmentation, and loss. Inside Israel, where Palestinian presence was heavily restricted and censored, only al-Ittihad and its literary supplement al-Jadid survived, becoming the central platforms through which a new, isolated post-Nakbah literature emerged that focused on resisting erasure, asserting identity, and reconnecting with Arab and Palestinian (literary) heritage. Under Israeli military rule, a new wave of arrests produced another generation of prisoner literature, echoing the era of the 1936–39 Revolt (reference).
Themes of anticolonial resistance and revolution begin to define literary content, laying the groundwork for future ‘resistance literature’(see also I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Resistance and Revolution). This term was coined by Kanafani’s landmark article entitled “Adab al-muqawama fi Filastin al-muhtalla” (“Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine”) that was published in Beirut’s al-Adab magazine in 1966 (reference). Palestinian literature also sought to articulate the fears of Palestinians in the face of the onslaught as well as their diminishing hopes for a national salvation within an independent Palestine (reference).
It also aimed at describing experiences of many Palestinian refugees who were forced to settle (and wrote) in neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Syria, and linked to literature of the Palestinian diaspora.
Poetry, although outside of the scope of this encyclopedia, became a powerful tool for political mobilization during this period, especially through festivals that helped spread nationalist sentiment and circulated poems written in prison.
- Muḥammad al-Asʿad (1994 – 2021, Palestine) – Aṭfāl al-Nadā (1990, English trans. Children of the Dawn, 2026). Combining poetry, prose, historical fiction, and elements of magical realism, this novel traces the author’s journey from his childhood village Umm al-Zenat near Haifa to exile in Iraq following the 1948 Nakbah (reference). Reflecting on his memories of Umm al-Zaynāt, the novel captures the Nakbah as both a personal and collective experience of pain, loss, displacement, and survival, as it includes stories told by the author’s mother and elders but also historical sources (reference).
- Mīr Baṣrī (1911 – 2006, Iraq) – Riḥlat al-ʿUmr min Ḍifāf Dijlah ilā Wādī al-Tāymiz (‘From the banks of the Tigris to the Thames Valley’, 1992). In his memoir, Baṣrī reflects on his life as a Jew in Iraq, his work for the Iraqi government during the creation of Israel, and his eventual exile to London (also in M: Memoirs).
- Anwār Ḥāmid (1957-, Palestine) – Yāffā Tuʿid Qahwah al-Sabāḥ (‘Jaffa makes morning coffee’, 2012). This novel describes the city of Jaffa in the 1940s as a place of markets, Turkish baths, different religions, and family outings to the shore of Lake Tiberias. As such, it describes the daily lived of its citizens before the Nakbah of 1948, with a specific focus on a love-story between two young people from different social backgrounds.
- Ghassān Kanafānī’s (1936 – 1972, Palestine / Israel) short story ‘Arḍ al-Burtuqāl al-Ḥazīn’ (‘Land of Sad Oranges’) from the similarly named collection (1958, English trans. The Land of Sad Oranges’, 1962) and Mā Tabaqqā Lakum (1966, English trans. What remains for you, 1988).
In the short story, Kanafānī uses the voice of a child to narrate the tragic events of the 1948 Nakbah. The homeland of Palestine is described as an endless orange grove that the child’s family had planted but that are no more, just as the narrator’s childhood in Jaffa has evaporated (reference)(also in F: Children and Family Life: Children and Adolescents: War and devastation through children’s eyes).
Mā Tabaqqā Lakum describes the effect of the events of 1948 on one family. The family becomes scattered and Ḥāmid and Maryman, brother and sister, fight their separate battles, the former to cross the desert in order to join his mother in Jordan, the latter to be rid of her treacherous husband (reference). Time and the ticking of the clock on the wall and on Ḥāmid’s watch are used as symbols of the common and united struggle against enemies even though situations and dimensions may be different.
- Ilyās Khūrī (1948-, Lebanon) – Bāb al-Shams (1998, English trans. Gate of the Sun, 2007). This novel portrays the Palestinians’ experience of displacement and ‘imprisonment’ through narratives of the 1948 al-Nakbah (reference). The novel is based on extensive conversations the author had with Palestinian refugees and depicts the way they are oppressed by both the Israeli occupation, as well as repressive Arab regimes. The story of Yūnis al-Asadī, who narrates the pain and torment of Palestinians in Lebanese prisons, tries to incite a collective return to Palestinian villages and cities, and plans violent attacks from the South of Lebanon, is intertwined with that of Dr Khalīl, who works in in a makeshift hospital of the Shatila refugee camp (reference) (also in M: Movement (E) migration, Refugees, and Return: Refugees in Arab Countries).
- Nabīl Khūrī (1929 – 2002, Palestine) – al-Raḥīl (‘The departure’, 1969) follows Abū ʿAdnān as he flees from his home during the 1930s into exile in Bethlehem in 1948, and then again to a refugee camp in Jordan in 1967 (also in R: Refugees: Refugees in Arab Countries and 1967 al-Naksah).
- Ibrāhīm Naṣrallah (1954-, Jordan / Palestine) – Zamān al-Khuyūl al-Bayḍāʾ (2007, English trans. Time of White Horses, 2012). In nearly 600 pages, Naṣrāllah traces the effects of Zionist colonialism from the 1880s on life in the fictional Palestinian village of Hadiya, showing the colonial prehistory of the Nakbah under the Ottoman and British empire (reference). Through the voices of village elder Hajj Maḥmūd and his multigenerational family, the novel describes the customs, social relations, and agricultural economy of the village, basing his fiction in a series of transcribed oral testimonies by al-Nakbah survivors. It was written within his broader project Palestinian Comedy, an eight-novel series in the spirit of Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine (also in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Zionism and L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Philosophical heritage: French authors and philosophers).
- The analogy Palestine +100 (2019, eds. Selma Dabbagh and Mazen Maarouf) collects the views of several Palestinian writers who in short stories describe what they think Palestine will look like 100 years after the Nakbah, in 2048. Among the authors are Talal Abu Shawish, Liana Badr, and Mazen Maarouf. In various stories that use different literary genres, the authors reflect on how they think Palestine is still affected by or escaped the effects of the Nakbah (also in S: Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction: On Earth).
- Rabʿi al-Madḥūn (1945-, Palestine) – Maṣāʾr: Kūnshirtū al-Hūlūkaūst wa-al-Nakbah (2015, English trans. Fractured Destinies: A Novel, 2018). Written in four parts, each representing a concerto movement, this pioneering Palestinian novel looks at both the holocaust and the Nakbah. The author mentions the genocide on Jews in Europe and suffering of Jews in for example concentration camps. It furthermore examines the tragedy of everyday Palestinian life, telling the story of Palestinians living under Israeli law and forced to assume Israeli nationality, as well as exiled Palestinians trying to return to their now-occupied home country. This novel won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 (also in M: Movement: (E) Migration, Refugees and Return: Return: Return to Palestine).
- ʿAdanīyah Shiblī (1974- Palestine) – Tafṣīl Thānawī (2017, English Trans. Minor Detail, 2020). In 2004, the nameless female narrator from Ramallah discovers a 1949 gang rape and murder of a Bedouin girl at the Nerim military outpost at a time when the newly-established Israeli state annexes more territory (reference). She becomes determined to find the girl’s grave. Yet, as she only has one newspaper article that describes the gruesome event, she searches more documentation and encounters the obstacles and dangers of accessing Israeli (military) archives, as well as how they legitimize state violence and control and erase the Palestinian narrative (reference). The novel, in precise language, connects present day Palestine the period before the Nakbah, highlighting the silence that surrounds past atrocities and continues to the present (reference) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: The Marginalized: Bedouin).
- Rashād Abū Shāwir (1974-, Lebanon) – al-ʿUshshāq (‘The lovers’, 1977) pictures life in Jericho between the 1940s and 1967 through the story of Maḥmūd and Nadā. The love of a person is mixed with the love for one’s country in this storyline that encompasses the immediate consequences of the 1948 al-Nakbah and the 1967 al-Naksah, including the Palestinian displacement.
- Yaḥyā Yakhlif (1944-, Palestine) – Buhayra Waraʾa al-Rīḥ (1991, English trans. A Lake Beyond the Wind, 1999). Recounts the gradual fall of Samakh, a Palestinian village, in the face of Zionist forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The story is told from different viewpoints, including a soldier who joins the Arab Liberation Army, and Wolf, a dog owned by Radi one of the village’s beloved young men.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Refqa Abu-Remaileh, 2023. “Literature under British Occupation,” A Country of Words: Mapping Memory, Resistance, and Exile in Palestinian Literary History, https://countryofwords.supdigital.org/periods/literature-under-british-occupation/ (accessed 25 October 2025)
- EAL, p. 597
- Samar Attar. 2016. “Chapter 9: Grieving over Home. A Mother or a Grave? The Vision of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature” in Representations and Visions of Homeland in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Sebastian Günter and Stephan Milich. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Zürich, New York. pp. 155-183, p. 162
- Roger Allen. 1992. “The Mature Arabic Novel Outside Egypt.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Badawī. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 193-223, p. 199
- Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Abū Ḥanīsh. 2006. “al-Filasṭīnī wa al-Sijn fī Riwāyat ‘Bāb al-Shams’ li-Ilyās Khurī.” www.diwanalarab.com, 13 September 2006, https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%86 (last accessed 12 February 2024)
- Maya Jaggi. 2005. “The Arab’s Arabs. Myths and heroism inform a history of Palestine in Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun, says Maya Jaggi.” www.theguardian.com, 12 November 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/12/featuresreviews.guardianreview16 (last accessed 12 February 2024)
- Karim Mattar. 2014. “Out of time: colonial history in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s ‘Time of White Horses’.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50(02): 176-188, p. 180
- Isabella Hammad. 2022. “Minor Detail.” Journal of Palestine Studies, 51(4): 113-117, p. 113, 114
- Hania A.M. Nashef. 2022. “Suppressed Narrator, Silenced Victim in Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail.” Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies 2(1): 12-16, p. 12, 13