The reading list

The Library

Built slowly and shelved by kind: foundational histories, memoirs of return, novels of exile, and the poetry that carried a people. The starting shelf is marked with a gilt foot — begin there, then keep reading outward.

A gilt foot marks each starting title.

This week on the tableWeek of 17 August 2026

Memoir · 1990

A Mountainous Journey: A Poet's Autobiography

Fadwa Tuqan

The autobiography of the poet of Nablus — a girl pulled out of school by the constraints of her own society, taught poetry at home by her brother, and turned by 1967 into the voice of a country.

Chosen from the titles fewer readers reach for, not from the canon. Someone gave years to this book. The least an archive can do is put it on the table and say where to get it. A new one goes up each week.