Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Najati Sidqi, "Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist: The Secret Life of Najati Sidqi" (U Texas Press, 2025)
Description: In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, Sidqi concealed a critical component of his life from the world and his family. He was an underground activist for the Palestinian Communist Party, a risky and influential pursuit that took him to early Bolshevik Moscow, British courts and prison cells in Palestine, Nazi Germany, intrigue-heavy interwar Paris, and Civil War Spain, Morocco, and Algeria. Throughout his journey, Sidqi continued to write, even as he faced fascism, intense surveillance, active warzones, the death of...