Author Isabella Hammad will deliver a talk on narrative form and its relationship to discourse around Palestine and Palestinian history through the lens of Anagnorisis, or Recognition, a narrative turning point based on a moment of sudden awakening or understanding. This year’s Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture commemorates the 20th anniversary of Said’s death.

Isabella Hammad is the author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost. She won the 2018 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, an O. Henry Award, the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Palestine Book Award and a Betty Trask Award, and she was recognized as a National Book Foundation’s "5 under 35." Her work has been supported with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Hammad has taught literature and creative writing at NYU, Brown University, and Al Quds Bard College. In 2023, she was included on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, which identifies the most significant British writers under the age of 40. She is currently working on a novel set at the Bandung Conference of 1955.

The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture is given in honor of the public intellectual and literary critic, Edward W. Said, who taught in the English & Comparative Literature Department at Columbia from 1963 until 2003. University Professor Said was perhaps best known for his books Orientalism, published in 1978, and Culture and Imperialism, published in 1993, both of which made major contributions to the field of cultural and postcolonial studies. The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture, organized by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, pays tribute to University Professor Said by bringing to Columbia speakers who embody his beliefs and the legacy of his work.

This event is organized by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and cosponsored by The Center for Palestine Studies, The Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the Italian Academy.

There is a limit of one (1) reservation per person. Seating is limited and first come, first served. Priority will be given to those who register in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. Check-in begins one (1) hour before the event and early arrival is suggested.

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were uprooted from their land in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in the Alwehdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, and began his working life as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked as a journalist and a cultural Director. He has been a full-time writer since 2006, publishing 14 poetry collections and 22 novels, including his epic series The Palestinian Comedy of 12 novels covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history. Four of his novels and a volume of poetry have been translated into English, including his novel Time of White Horses which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009 and for the 2014 London-based Middle East Monitor Prize for the Best Novel about Palestine. Lanterns of the King of Galilee was also long listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013. Three of his novels have been translated into Italian, one into Danish and one into Turkish. He is also an artist and photographer and has had four solo exhibitions of his photography. He has won eight literary prizes, among them the prestigious Sultan Owais Literary Award for Poetry in 1997. His novel Prairies of Fever was listed by The Guardian newspaper in the top 10 most important novels written about the Arab world. In 2012, he won the inaugural Jerusalem Award for Culture and Creativity for his literary work. His novel The Spirits of Kilimanjaro won the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel in 2016. He was awarded the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog. In 2020 he became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the “Katara Prize” for Arabic Novels for the second time for his novel A Tank Under the Christmas Tree.