John Berger reads Ghassan Kanafani's Letter from Gaza (Inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008)

John Berger: Extract from A Seventh Man (1975)

John Berger: Extract from A Seventh Man (1975) by TigersEye99

Let Vietnam live!

Let Vietnam live! | by John Berger, 1967

John Berger: Directions in Hell

John Berger: Directions in Hell by TigersEye99

Mural by Mahmoud Darwish

Mural by Mahmoud Darwish

by Mahmoud Darwish

Translated by John Berger, and Rema Hammami

A major new translation of remarkable, late poems by the great Palestinian poet. Mahmoud Darwish was the Palestinian national poet. One of the greatest poets of the last half-century, his work evokes the loss of his homeland and is suffused with the pain of dispossession, exile and loss. His poems also display a brilliant acuity, a passion for and openness to the world and, above all, a deep and abiding humanity. Here, his close friends John Berger and Rema Hammami present a beautiful new translation of two of Darwish’s later works, his long masterpiece “Mural,” a contemplation of his life and work written following life-threatening surgery, and his last poem, “The Dice Player,” which Darwish read in Ramallah a month before his death. Illustrated with original drawings by John Berger, Mural is a testimony to one of the most important and powerful poets of our age.

A Seventh Man

A Seventh Man

by John Berger
Photography by Jean Mohr

New edition of this seminal exploration of migrant workers.

Why does the Western world look to migrant laborers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is to be a migrant worker—the material circumstances and the inner experience—and, in doing so, reveal how the migrant is not so much on the margins of modern life, but absolutely central to it. First published in 1975, this finely wrought exploration remains as urgent as ever, presenting a mode of living that pervades the countries of the West and yet is excluded from much of its culture.

The Nature of Mass Demonstrations

John Berger (1968)

Seventy years ago (on 6 May 1898) there was a massive demonstration of workers, men and women, in the centre of Milan. The events which led up to it involve too long a history to treat with here. The demonstration was attacked and broken up by the army under the command of General Beccaris. At noon the cavalry charged the crowd: the unarmed workers tried to make barricades: martial law was declared and for three days the army fought against the unarmed.

That have not been asked: ten dispatches about endurance in face of walls

John Berger, Open Democracy, 16 February 2005

 

“The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices.” John Berger on poverty, desire, storytelling, and the future’s gift to the present.

1

The wind got up in
the night and took our plans away.

(Chinese proverb)

Undefeated despair

John Berger, Open Democracy, 13 January 2006

How is it I am still alive? I’ll tell you I’m alive because there’s a temporary shortage of death. This is said with a grin, which is on the far side of a longing for normalcy, for an ordinary life.

Everywhere one goes in Palestine - even in rural areas - one finds oneself amongst rubble, picking a way through, round and over it. At a checkpoint, around some greenhouses which lorries can no longer reach, along any street, going to any rendezvous.

John Berger reading an extract from 'Mural' by Mahmoud Darwish

John Berger on Palestine