Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian American

Born in a town that is now part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian activist Turki ( Soul in Exile ) fled his homeland with his family in 1949 and grew up in a Beirut refugee camp. This arresting memoir tracks his quest for self-discovery to Australia, where he emigrated in his late teens, and to hippie wanderings in Nepal, India and Europe. In the mid-1970s, he moved to the U.S. with the ``nice Jewish girl'' whom he married and soon divorced; he chronicles his years of self-destructive drinking, drug-taking and womanizing, and his later, mature emergence as a Palestinian-American leader. Turki recounts his return to his birthplace on the eve of the Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Repelled by what he sees as Palestinian society's repressive patriarchy, Turki denounces the PLO as blatantly corrupt and incompetent. He sharply criticizes the Arab world's authoritarian regimes, terrorism and religious fundamentalism. (July)