Fast Times in PalestineFast Times in Palestine
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With dizzying speed she finds herself attending Yasser Arafat's funeral, sharing a holiday dinner with a suicide bomber's family, tour-guiding Israeli friends around the West Bank, dating a Palestinian from a conservative Muslim village, being held at gunpoint and injured by a stun grenade, and witnessing the 2005 Disengagement from inside the Gaza Strip. The gripping narrative focuses not only on violence, terror, and social and political upheavals but also on the daily rounds of house parties, concerts, barbecues, weddings, jokes, harvests, and romantic drama that happen in between.
From idyllic olive groves to Palestinian beer gardens, from Passover in Tel Aviv to Ramadan in a Hamas village, from rooftop parties in Ramallah to militant rallies in Nablus, the book is packed with suspense, humor, and unforgettable characters. Its seamless blend of travelogue, memoir, and narrative journalism ramps the average American up to a sophisticated, multi-faceted understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Funny, gorgeous, shocking, and galvanizing, Fast Times in Palestine challenges the way we think not only about the Middle East but albout human nature and our place in the world.
REVIEWS
“A moving, inspiring account of life in Palestine that’s enormously informative yet reads like a novel.”
-- REBECCA VILKOMERSON, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace
“It’s love in the time of occupation as Pamela Olson... takes us on the emotional roller-coaster of her very personal experience of life in Ramallah -- and in doing so lays bare the human drama of a people... determined to live free.”
-- TONY KARON, Senior Editor, TIME
“Part adventure story, part searing reportage, part love story, and wholly absorbing.”
-- DR. KENNETH RING, co-author, Letters from Palestine
For more information, visit pamolson.org
- Paperback: 10 pages
- Publisher: Mason Hill Press; 2011-05-20
- Label: Mason Hill Press
- Studio: Mason Hill Press
- ISBN: 0615456243
- Sales Rank in Books: #284521
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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:  A new view..., By H. Starr (USA) - See all my reviews This review is from: Fast Times in Palestine (Kindle Edition) This is a deeply personal story about a decent and intelligent, if initially uninformed and sheltered, American who gets swept off her feet by the beauty and wonder of Palestine and the people who live there. Her love for the people and the place shine on every page. And when you love someone, it hurts to see them bullied, humiliated and marginalized. It hurts to see a land you love carved into unnatural pieces by a concrete wall or lives you treasure ripped apart by machine gun fire or a suicide bomber. This book isn't about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it's an intense, first person narrative about the beauty and danger of life in Palestine.
But what I think most readers will come away with is the belief that underneath the ugliness of the occupation and the intifada there is something that is beautiful and absolutely worth protecting. And in the small acts where Israelis and Palestinians work together, the author shows you a future that we must insist upon: where...Read more 22 of 25 people found the following review helpful: Everyone should read this book, By Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Fast Times in Palestine (Paperback) Before I read this book, I didn't have a stance on the conflict because I didn't know enough. My family is Jewish and very pro-Israel, but I am agnostic and I try not to form opinions without facts, so I have always taken everything they say with a grain of salt. "The Palestinians don't want a state. They don't want peace. They won't be happy until every Jew on the face of the Earth is dead." This is what I grew up with.
But this book opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed: the world of occupied Palestine. I consider myself very aware politically, so it's hard to believe the truth has eluded me for so many years. Never underestimate the power of the media, I guess. I get my information from a decent variety of sources, but when all those sources are deliberately hiding so much information, how is a person supposed to know any better? The media portrays Palestine as the aggressor in the conflict, and speaks of the government as if it represents the feelings of the...Read more 19 of 22 people found the following review helpful: Gripping, Moving, and Above All Educational, By This review is from: Fast Times in Palestine (Paperback) I mentioned this book to a friend of mine, and their response was they would give it a read, "to see how balanced it was." I don't know about balanced; the author was living in Palestine. Fair, however, it is. It is what she experienced, the good, the bad, the ugly. She walked in with the same ideas most Westerners have, but was willing to learn and realize that much of what gets reported is at best an exaggeration and at worst blatantly false. This book simply reports the truth as she experienced it, with reports and articles and citations from sources in Israel and from around the world to back up her claims.
She doesn't hate Israel or Jews or Palestine or Muslims, but she sure didn't like being hit in the leg with a grenade at a peaceful protest or almost getting shot by a 19-year-old with a machine gun because she was in a car at night with Arabs. Nor did she like being afraid of suicide bombers at cafes in Israel or how the corrupt Palestinian government cared about...Read more |
