Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials

by Raja Shehadeh, Nadia Albina (Narrator), Penny Johnson

A profound meditation on memory and the preservation of Palestinian heritage, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I .

Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine—now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories—and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on the small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson what has been memorialized, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased—and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land.

In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba—the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians—but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.

Audible Audio

Published September 30, 2025

About the author

Raja Shehadeh (Arabic: رجا شحادة) is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He is the author of Strangers in the House (2002), described by The Economist as “distinctive and truly impressive”, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing (2003), Palestinian Walks (2007), for which he won the 2008 Orwell Prize, and A Rift in Time (2010). Shehadeh trained as a barrister in London and is a founder of the human rights organization Al-Haq. He blogs regularly for the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times and lives in Ramallah, on the West Bank.