No Land to Stand On

'With its spiritual and intellectual power, Mahmoud Khalil's book is already a classic of dissident literature' - Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza

A revelatory and powerful testament of protest, courage and imprisonment in America’s deportation regime

‘Are you Mahmoud Khalil?’ With this question, ICE took the Palestinian student and US legal resident from his pregnant wife and home in New York City, transported him across the country and locked him up in a Louisiana detention camp under threat of deportation. His ‘crime’: exercising his right to free speech at Columbia University, where he emerged as a leading voice against the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. No Land to Stand On is his indelible account of becoming the target of a lawless regime shredding basic rights.

Drawing on his prison diary and writing in vivid, shocking detail, Mahmoud Khalil conjures the despair and cruelty of ICE detention, where prisoners can vanish overnight and visiting families risk their own deportation. In tandem, he tells the multigenerational story of a family expelled from Palestine to a Syrian refugee camp, of his flight from Assad’s regime to Lebanon, of arrival in an America that promised permanence and protection, and of the enduring struggle for Palestine.

An era-defining account of the cost of dissent and a work of immense courage, resistance and moral clarity, No Land to Stand On is a call to all of us to defend the right to safety, freedom and a place to call home.