In Search Of Fatima Pa (New)

No memoir of life as a diaspora Palestinian has been as personal and intimate as Ghada Karmi's. Taking the reader through her childhood in Palestine, her flight to Britain after the catastrophe of 1948, and her coming of age in the coffee bars of Golders Green ' the middle-class Jewish quarter in North London ' Karmi reminds us of the adversities faced by those born in Palestine and, in tracing out her life beyond Palestinian borders, hints at the hardships that continue to plague those that remained in her mother country. Yet it is with a gentle humor that she describes the bizarre and sometimes tense realities that mask her life in 'œLittle Tel Aviv'� and, later, her struggle, like that of many other women in the late-fifties, to get a university grant to study medicine. Karmi's straightforward yet poignant tone is a revelatory glance into the Palestinian exile experience.

Ghada Karmi was born in Jerusalem and trained as a doctor of medicine at Bristol University. She established the first British-Palestinian medical charity in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Her previous books include The Ethnic Health Factfile and Jerusalem Today: What Future for the Peace Process? and, as co-editor with E. Cotran, The Palestinian Exodus, 1948–1998.