Reviews

Examining the newest publications on the Middle East.



Grace Perriman
Written by :
on : Saturday, 25 May, 2013

Evolutionary, not Revolutionary

In the first frenzied hours following the Boston bombings, a young Saudi man was mistakenly reported to be a suspect. “Investigators have a suspect—a Saudi Arabian national,” shrieked the New York Post, while Fox News fanned the flames of rumor, naming the Saudi student as a “person of interest” in the investigation. The individual was later revealed to be a witness, not a suspect. But for several long hours, it seemed that all the hard work that had gone into improving Saudi Arabia...

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Michelle Williams
Written by :
on : Tuesday, 9 Apr, 2013

Remembering Cairo

There is a story from the Mubarak era about a Cairo shopkeeper who had a portrait of each of Gamal Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak decorating the wall of his shop. A passing tourist asked the shopkeeper about the portraits and he replied, “The first led the 1952 revolution, the second led Egypt in the 1973 war and the third—he is the father of Ala'a, my business partner.” This tale reveals as much about the Egyptian sense of humor as it does about the rising discontent that swept th...

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Martin Schulz & André Azoulay
on : Friday, 5 Apr, 2013

A Wave Of Citizenship Breaks Across the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean stands torn between renewal and crisis. New political, social and cultural realities struggle through the pain of birth. Both north and south of the sea, ther...

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Celia Topping
Written by :
on : Friday, 22 Mar, 2013

Meet Reel Iraq

Ten years ago the world witnessed massive protests against the US and UK-led invasion of Iraq, with up to sixty countries standing in solidarity with the Iraqi people. In Londo...

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Malik Al-Abdeh
Written by :
on : Wednesday, 13 Mar, 2013

Out of the Ashes

Syria was the first modern Arab state to come into existence and the first Arab republic to elect its president, and it had the first Arab army to procure arms from the Sov...

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Alex Edwards
Written by :
on : Saturday, 23 Feb, 2013

Explaining Iraq’s Agony

Few scholars have had a better view of the catastrophic car crash that is modern Iraq than the British academic Toby Dodge. Originally one of a small group of experts called ...

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Nicholas Birch
Written by :
on : Thursday, 21 Feb, 2013

Tranquility Street

Huzur [hoo-ZOOR] n. tranquility, calm In a famous 1978 essay, the Islamist poet İsmet Özel suggested that the traditionalist, conservative character of contemporary Turk...

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Nicholas Blincoe
Written by :
on : Tuesday, 22 Jan, 2013

The Lebanese Method

With his first book for a popular audience, Fooled by Randomness (2001), the statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb quickly became the new century’s favorite skeptic: We li...

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Grace Perriman
Written by :
on : Tuesday, 8 Jan, 2013

Non-Fiction Heroine

In a steamy University of Damascus classroom, Arabic language students attempt to translate Samar Yazbek’s novel Cinnamon. Heads are buried inside diction...

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Ataollah Mohajerani
Written by :
on : Wednesday, 2 Jan, 2013

A Subversive Classic

At nearly 73 years of age, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is one of the most famous Iranian novelists. Some critics have even praised him as Iran’s Tolstoy, Balzac, or Kafka. In truth, ...

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