5th September 2025


Books Spotlight Discover


Titles in this Discover preview are to be published in October 2025 Previews


Words matter: the power of publishing to amplify dissent


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Our expert, their picks


Natasha Onwuemezi


Natasha is a freelance writer, editor and strategist with more than 10 years’ experience working across print and digital. She guest edits the Black Issue of The Bookseller, an annual focus on Black writers and publishing professionals.


Naseer Aruri, Edmund Ghareeb Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance


Seven Stories UK, 30th, £14.99, PB, 9781911710172


In 1971, after Black activist George Jackson was killed by prison guards in San Quentin, a poem found in his cell was misattributed to him. It was actually authored by Palestinian poet Sameeh Al-Qassem and anchored an anthology titled Enemy of the Sun, first published in 1970. This updated edition features 12 poets whose words of grief, hope and refusal tell a story of solidarity that echoes across global struggles against oppression – from Palestine to South Africa, Algeria, Vietnam and the US.


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Jonathan Dimbleby, Don McCullin The Palestinians


Quartet, 23rd, £25, HB, 9781068407703


Journalist Dimbleby and photographer McCullin chronicle Palestinian history from 1948 onwards, capturing dispossession, resilience and the ongoing struggle for identity and land. Through intimate interviews and portraits – of elders recalling exile and youths risking everything for a homeland – this title illuminates the human reality behind the “Palestinian problem”. First published in 1979, this title is reissued with updated photography. A landmark account of a people’s enduring fight for justice and recognition.


Fatima Bhutto, Sonia Faleiro Gaza: The Story of a Genocide


Verso, 7th, £12.99, PB, 9781836742241


In this powerful collection of personal testimony, poetry, photography, art and frontline reportage, artists and writers bear witness to the vast and ongoing destruction inflicted on the Palestinian people. Ahmed Alnaouq recounts the devastating loss of 21 family members. Noor Alyacoubi offers a searing reflection on starvation. While Mariam Barghouti examines the brutality of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. These voices, among many others, illuminate the enduring psychological, physical and generational toll of state violence.


Shoal Collective Everything We Thought Was Beautiful


PM Press, 21st, £17.99, PB, 9798887441450


Powerful interviews with women working on the front lines of Palestine’s liberation movement. This title broadcasts these women’s struggles in their own words and on all fronts – against colonialism, white supremacy, conservatism, patriarchy, state control – and Israel’s occupation. They discuss their politics, the fight for freedom and their hope for the future. Complied by Shoal Collective, a co-operative of independent writers and researchers writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism.


Ghassan Kanafani Men in the Sun: And Other Palestinian Stories


Verso, 7th, £11.99, PB, 9781804298589


First published in 1962, Men in the Sun is both a classic of Arab literature and of what Kanafani himself would term “resistance literature”. While “breezily conversational”, with “disarming, dreamy strokes of lyricism”, this short novel delivers a “shuddering and grounding dose of true horror” as it follows three Palestinian men who embark on a brutal and treacherous odyssey across the Iraqi desert. This new edition also includes six short stories, delivering unsparing depictions of Palestinian life. A lead title for the publisher.


ctober marks two years since Israel began its war in Gaza, but as a number of titles in this preview attest, the struggle for survival and liberation has been ongoing for


decades. Seven Stories UK is reissuing the 1970 title Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance, which links 12 poets whose words of grief and hope reverberate across Palestine and the globe. Similarly, Jonathan Dimbleby’s The Palestinians (Quartet), first published in 1979 and reissued with Don McCullin’s stark photog- raphy, remains a landmark account of dispos- session and endurance. These titles remind us that survival and resist-


ance are never abstract – we must never stop bringing these stories to the fore. Some testify from the front lines, including Shoal Collective’s Everything We Thought Was Beautiful (PM Press), which foregrounds women’s voices in the fight


for liberation through the eyes of a doctor expos- ing attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, a journalist resist- ing settlers in the West Bank and many others. This thread can be found elsewhere in this


preview, testifying to our shared capacity to keep alive voices of dissent, change and hope across countries, continents and centuries. In The Power of Protest in Healthcare (Jessica Kingsley Publishers), doctor and activist Meenal Viz shows how protest can drive change in medicine, while The Trafficker Next Door: How Household Employers Exploit Domestic Workers (WW Norton), sees sociologist Rhacel Salazar Parreñas examine the structural forces enabling the exploitation of domestic workers and call for justice and fair treatment for all workers. Collectively, these titles affirm the vital role


of publishing in resisting erasure, preserving memory and amplifying voices of survival in the face of atrocity.


Books


Spotlight: Discover


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