A collection of writings by the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti will be published in November, bringing together prison letters, interviews, personal material and documents from the last three decades of Barghouti’s political life and incarceration.
Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House UK, will publish Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine by Palestinian political leader and elected legislator Marwan Barghouti, who has been imprisoned in Israel since 2002. The book features an introduction by Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa.
World all-language rights were acquired from David Godwin Associates. Rights have already been sold to Penguin Random House publishers in Spain and Portugal, and to Fischer in Germany, Flammarion in France, Rizzoli in Italy, Metaichmio in Greece, and Companhia das Letras in Brazilian Portuguese. The book will be published on 5th November.
Barghouti grew up under Israeli military occupation and has been arrested repeatedly for his political activism. He was seized by Israeli soldiers when he was serving as an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and was tried on terror charges, which he has always denied. The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations and legal experts. Polls have shown he remains a popular Palestinian leader.
“Unbroken will bring together private letters to his family, letters to public figures, press interviews, public statements, important historical documents, personal photos and extracts from his book, 1,000 Days in Solitary Confinement (previously only published in Arabic),” the synopsis says. “This is a rare opportunity to engage with the writings and thinking of a political leader who has been imprisoned for more than two decades. Marwan Barghouti has spent much of that time in total isolation without access to his family, and he has not written anything new since October 2023.”
A renewed international campaign to free Barghouti officially launched on 29th November last year, with a global day of action. The launch kicked off with a giant public art installation in Barghouti’s birth place of Kobar, Palestine, with co-ordinated “Free Marwan” murals painted across London, and solidarity demonstrations held in cities across the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, US and South Africa. In December, more than 200 leading cultural figures – including Margaret Atwood, Annie Ernaux, Benedict Cumberbatch, Elif Shafak, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Tilda Swinton, Olga Tokarczuk, Colm Tóibín, Ian McKellen and Gary Lineker – signed an open letter calling for his release.
“For a long time, I have wished that the world could hear Marwan in his own voice, not through the noise surrounding him,” his wife said. “I wished this for the public, and for his grandchildren who have never met him yet never stop asking about him. I wished it for a generation born and grown while he’s behind bars. This book finally makes that possible – and I hope it helps people understand who Marwan Barghouti truly is, and how he embodies the Palestinian struggle for freedom and dignity.”
