By Wisam Rafeedie

Translated by the Palestinian Youth Movement 

A novel liberated from Zionist prisons presented in its first ever English translation.

The Trinity of Fundamentals follows the story of 22-year-old Kan’an during his nine years of hiding from the occupation between 1982 and 1991. Driven by an unshakable commitment to the Palestinian cause, Kan’an takes the reader through his compelling journey filled with sacrifice and struggle, love and pain, isolation and liberation. All the while, major political and historical transformations unfold across international, regional and local contexts, including the First Intifada. Throughout all this, Kan’an maintains a spirit of revolutionary optimism so strong that the reader is bound to be transformed. It is all the more moving to know that Kan’an’s story is inspired by the real life experience of Rafeedie as he organized and struggled against the Zionist oppression of his people.

Love, revolution, and life—these are the “Trinity of Fundamentals'' that pave Kan’an’s path of struggle. Although the novel is set in the past, it holds many lessons that resonate with our current political moment, mobilizing us into collective action.

WISAM RAFEEDIE is a former Palestinian political prisoner, full-time researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences at Bethlehem University–Palestine. He was a part-time lecturer in Sociology and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University. He holds two master’s degrees from Birzeit University, one in sociology for his thesis on the changes in the status of women in contemporary Palestinian literature before and after Oslo, and the other in contemporary Arab studies.

PALESTINIAN YOUTH MOVEMENT’S POPULAR UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE believes that education must be wielded in service of struggle. Their viewpoint finds inspiration and guidance from the Popular University in Palestine, of which the martyred Basel al-Araj was a part. One of its educators, Khaled Odeitallah, asked: “What is the political role that knowledge production must play?” From this perspective they seek to motivate, engage and facilitate a robust engagement on the history and present of our struggle.

ISBN-13: 979-8-9882602-1-9

Page count: 364