The Secret of the Oil

The novel The Secret of the Oil by the prisoner Walid Daqqa is the first work for young adults within what might be called Palestinian prison literature. It is an exciting novel that tells the story of the child ‘Joud,’ who enlists his animal friends and an olive tree to visit his imprisoned father. It is a model of adventure literature whose heroes live under occupation, with all that circumstances demand of the necessity of hiding, without ever leaving the world of imagination and childhood. Layla Al-Batran The prisoner Walid Nimer Daqqa was born in 1961 in Baqa al-Gharbiyyeh, in Palestine occupied in 1948. He was arrested in 1986, sentenced to life imprisonment, and has so far spent 32 years in Israeli occupation prisons. During his incarceration he earned a master’s degree in political science and produced many studies and articles, in addition to political and cultural texts, among the most important of them the study “Fusing Consciousness,” and the text “Parallel Time,” which addresses the experience of imprisonment and was adapted into a theatrical performance.