Palestinian Identity by Rashid I. Khalidi
Published 1998 · 304 pages · 83,600 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · History, Politics & Society
How hard is Palestinian Identity to read?
Palestinian Identity scores 43 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Khalidi writes in clear academic English with Arabic and Ottoman terms explained as they arrive. The register is closer to Orientalism's lighter passages than to dense theory.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Sentences are measured and well organised, with scholarly qualifications but little nesting. A general reader follows them easily.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- The argument about collective identity is conceptual, but it rests on concrete newspapers, schools, families and events.
- Information density: 58 out of 100
- Each chapter packs in sources, dates, names and political shifts across Ottoman, Mandate and post-1948 periods, though the pace stays manageable.
How Palestinian Identity is regarded
Palestinian Identity holds a literary regard score of 62 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.