The Mosaic Rooms and Verso are delighted to present the launch of Return: A Palestinian Memoir, a new book by internationally best-selling author Ghada Karmi. 

What does it mean to return to a home that was once yours, yet you feel you will never be able to call home again? Best-selling author Ghada Karmi reflects on this, and more, in this eloquent and painful memoir of Palestinian exile and displacement. Suspended between old and new countries, yet fitting into neither, this is an intimate exploration of psychological displacement, loss of identity, and what it means to return to your homeland.

Following exile from Palestine in 1948, Ghada Karmi returns to her homeland – visiting places she has not seen since her childhood; facing the grim reality of occupation. She finds that her family home has now been occupied, and much of the West Bank militarized; meanwhile her encounters with politicians, fellow Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers forces her to question what role the diaspora has in the future of the homeland, and whether return is truly possible.

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 best-selling In Search of Fatima, The Ethnic Health Factfile and Jerusalem Today: What Future for the Peace Process?

Ghada Karmi will be in conversation with a special guest, to be announced shortly.

FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org