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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2024

        Romanticizing masculinity in Baathist Syria

        Gender, identity and ideology

        by Rahaf Aldoughli

        This book provides a novel analysis of the conceptual sources and ideological contours of the Assad regime. The book documents the Baathists' fascination with Romanticised and 'muscular' ideas of the nation that emerged in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European social philosophy, and traces the implementation and impacts of these ideologies in the Syrian context. Emphasising the emergence of new forms of public gendered identity in Syria as a unifying feature of nationalism bound closely with the stability of the regime, the book shows how Romantic, muscular nationalism first rose to hegemony and then was shattered by its inherent violence, contradictions and inequalities. The final chapter closes by considering how a new vision of pluralism and civic belonging is today challenging the Romanticised Baathist ideal in contention for Syria's future.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2024

        Coup in Damascus

        Husni al-Za'im and the birth of Syrian military rule

        by Carl Rihan

        Coup in Damascus is a history of Syria's first military regime. It plots the the fall of Syria's democracy and the rise of its military rulers, particularly Husni al-Zaim, whose brief rule in 1949 represented a profoundly transformative moment for the Syrian nation. It is a history of the thoughts, intentions and motives of political actors underpinning the events that have marked Syria's history after the first Arab-Israeli war, and focuses mainly on the interaction between local, regional and international actors. Unlike most histories of the modern Middle East that tackle broad intervals and that focus on the sequences of events, this history seeks to reconstruct the thought processes behind the events, and anchor them within the epoch's existing political and socioeconomic conditions. It draws on several methodological influences, particularly R.G. Collingwood's 'history as re-enactment of the past'.

      • Trusted Partner
        Fiction
        2017

        Remorse Test

        by Khalil Sweileh

        Remorse Test is Sweileh’s follow up to his novel Writing Love, which was the 2009 winner of The Mahfouz Medal for Literature. This semi-autobiographical novel, takes readers through the streets of Damascus and offers a first-hand look at life and loss during the Syrian civil war. The protagonist is a brilliant writer who is navigating a new, war-torn reality. While reminiscing about his past, he shows us what everyday life is like in Damascus—at once brutal and boring—and laments the missed opportunities and destruction the conflict has caused in his country. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, poet and novelist, author Khalil Sweileh writes about the psychological conflicts amid the shattered reality of place and society using language that is full of imagery. Remorse Test is an important addition to Syrian literature, both for its subject matter and unique use of narrative tools and vocabulary. (An extended English-language report on this book will be available soon.)

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        Fiction
        January 2016

        The Autumn of Innocence

        by Abbas Beydoun

        In his novel, The Autumn of Innocence, prominent Lebanese poet and novelist Abbas Beydoun artfully weaves a tragic story of a father-son relationship that ends disastrously with the son's violent death. This story unfolds along with the Arab Spring movement and explores the motivations behind religious extremism and questions cultural constructs of masculinity.   The novel opens with a letter from Ghassan to his cousin, describing how his father Massoud strangled his mother to death when Ghassan was just three years old. Afterward, Massoud flees the village in southern Lebanon. For 18 years, no one hears from him, and Ghassan grows up stigmatized by his father's violent crime.   In time, Ghassan's aunt Bushra-Massoud's sister-makes a confession: She encouraged Massoud to kill his wife, believing that his wife's low socioeconomic status would bring embarrassment to their wealthy family. Bushra also reveals that Massoud was driven to kill his wife because he feared that she would tell someone that he was impotent, undermining his sense of manhood and social status.   Meanwhile, Massoud has moved to southern Syria, where he remarried and had two more sons. During the Arab Spring, the militant groups fighting the Syrian regime transform him into a religious extremist.   In the second half of the novel, Massoud return to the village in southern Lebanon. He brings with him a group of men. Together they seize control of the village and terrorize its inhabitants. After killing the dogs, they begin murdering the villagers in the name of religion. One of Ghassan's friends is among the victims, and Massoud also threatens his family. Ghassan decides that he must kill his father, avenging the death of his friend and the deaths of the other villagers. In the end, he fails and is beheaded by Bushra's son, his cousin, who is has joined Massoud's thugs.   Beydoun captures the shifting points of view in a family shattered by the tyranny of normative masculinity and the resulting violence. The victims are women, of course, but also the men like Ghassan who reject these social and cultural expectations. The novel also portrays the rise of religious extremism and the terrorism it can inspire, which wreaks havoc on the lives of ordinary people. Beydoun's engaging language imbues the characters and the places they inhabit with a vibrancy and vitality that transcends the difficult subject matter.

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        Fiction
        2021

        Eye on Egypt: Café Riche

        by Maisoon Saqer

        The book opens a unique door to the history of Cairo and its journey from a social and cultural perspective and aims to build a new and different narrative for this history—one that shows Cairo as a cosmopolitan, multicultural city. Cairo’s Cafe Riche has a deep cultural history and a broad creative and social heritage. Saqer describes it as “the site where endless friendships are established between the café and history.” Saqer’s narrative is not just about the small café, but rather constitutes observance and analysis of the presence of this café in the history of Egypt and how we can view many events surrounding it. Here there is no separation between the political and the cultural, between the historical, the social, and the artistic. The book combines history and narrative, which makes it a documented historical biography on the one hand and a creative work on the other. It also documents an important era in Egypt’s cultural history by examining the cultural and social transformations in modern Egyptian history and highlighting prominent intellectuals and creators associated with the cafe and the history of intellectual life in Egypt.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2023

        Golden Mummies of Egypt

        Interpreting identities from the Graeco-Roman period

        by Campbell Price, Julia Thorne

        Golden Mummies of Egypt presents new insights and a rich perspective on beliefs about the afterlife during an era when Egypt was part of the Greek and Roman worlds (c. 300 BCE-200 CE). This beautifully illustrated book, featuring photography by Julia Thorne, accompanies Manchester Museum's first-ever international touring exhibition. Golden Mummies of Egypt is a visually spectacular exhibition that offers visitors unparalleled access to the museum's outstanding collection of Egyptian and Sudanese objects - one of the largest in the UK.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2023

        Arab youths

        by Laurent Bonnefoy, Myriam Catusse

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        Children's & YA
        January 2011

        The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air

        by Abdo Wazen

        In his first YA novel, cultural journalist and author Abdo Wazen writes about a blind teenager in Lebanon who finds strength and friendship among an unlikely group.   Growing up in a small Lebanese village, Bassim’s blindness limits his engagement with the materials taught in his schools. Despite his family’s love and support, his opportunities seem limited.   So at thirteen years old, Bassim leaves his village to join the Institute for the Blind in a Beirut suburb. There, he comes alive. He learns Braille and discovers talents he didn’t know he had. Bassim is empowered by his newfound abilities to read and write.   Thanks to his newly developed self-confidence, Bassim decides to take a risk and submit a short story to a competition sponsored by the Ministry of Education. After winning the competition, he is hired to work at the Institute for the Blind.   At the Institute, Bassim, a Sunni Muslim, forms a strong friendship with George, a Christian. Cooperation and collective support are central to the success of each student at the Institute, a principle that overcomes religious differences. In the book, the Institute comes to symbolize the positive changes that tolerance can bring to the country and society at large.   The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is also a book about Lebanon and its treatment of people with disabilities. It offers insight into the vital role of strong family support in individual success, the internal functioning of institutions like the Institute, as well as the unique religious and cultural environment of Beirut.   Wazen’s lucid language and the linear structure he employs result in a coherent and easy-to-read narrative. The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is an important contribution to a literature in which people with disabilities are underrepresented. In addition to offering a story of empowerment and friendship, this book also aims to educate readers about people with disabilities and shed light on the indispensable roles played by institutions like the Institute.

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        Sur la Route de la Soie

        by Amnon Shamosh

        Sur la Route de la Soie   Une histoire d’amour émouvante sur le fils de Timur Lang   Roman historique par Amnon Shamosh Amnon Shamosh, qui s’est rendu célèbre suite à la saga Michel Ezra Safra & Fils, ainsi que par des dizaines d'autres nouvelles captivantes, apparaissant dans les collections intitulées Ma Sœur, la Mariée et les Roues du Monde, nous surprend une fois encore avec un roman moderne, brillant et profond.   Le récit se développe autour d'anciennes traditions, complétées de faits historiques, mêlés à l'imaginaire de Shamosh et passionnant le lecteur. En 1400, le grand conquérant Timur Lang arrive dans la ville syrienne d'Alep (Aram Tsova) et expulse une dizaine de familles juives travaillant la soie, les bannissant vers la ville Samarcande, capitale de l'empire Timur, sur la route de la soie. Timur Lang enlève aussi les jeunes juives vierges, et les séquestre dans ses harems. L'une des vierges conquis le cœur du fils de Timur, intellectuel et créatif, régnant sous ses ordres. Le roi Elias, « fils de la juive » élevé dans la foi musulmane, s'embarque à la conquête de l'Espagne dans une tentative de connaître et de comprendre le monde chrétien ainsi que le monde juif, très prospères en Espagne à cette époque. Elias, en quête d'identité ainsi que d'une femme, trouve l’une et l’autre à Alep, la ville de ses ancêtres maternels. Sa jeune épouse est issue de la famille Dayan, liée à la dynastie du Roi David.    Le roman traverse trois périodes historiques. L'une se déroule au XVème siècle et se concentre particulièrement sur la famille royale et le harem de Samarcande. La seconde se déroule au début du XXème siècle, dans le quartier Boukhara de Jérusalem, dans lequel les immigrants de Boukhara et d'Alep se sont rassemblés; les leaders de cette nouvelle société d'immigrants Juifs visitent le quartier. La troisième période concerne la dernière décennie du siècle, avec l'immigration massive des Juifs de l’ancienne Union Soviétique ; ici, l'histoire se concentre principalement sur les immigrés de Boukhara. L'attention est portée sur Oshi Shauloff Ben Shaul, né dans le quartier Boukhara, dont la mère, originaire d'Alep, est la descendante de la maison Dayan et dont les racines remontent à l'une des familles expulsées d'Alep vers Samarcande.   Ce roman, passionnément érotique mais raffiné et mesuré, est écrit dans un style puissant et source d'inspiration – comme nous l'attendons de tout travail écrit par Amnon Shamosh. Né en Syrie en 1929, Amnon Shamosh a immigré à Tel-Aviv dans son enfance et devint plus tard l'un des membres fondateurs du kibboutz Ma'ayan Baruch, où il réside encore aujourd’hui. Diplômé de l'Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem, il écrit en vers et en prose pour les enfants et les adultes ; son travail a été traduit en anglais, en espagnol et en français. Amnon Shamosh reçut le prix Agnon, ainsi nommé ne l’honneur du célèbre lauréat israélien du prix Nobel de littérature, le prix de créativité du Premier Ministre, le prix de littérature du Président d'Israël, il remporta aussi de nombreux autres prix littéraires.

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        In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat

        by Iman Mersal

        ‘In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat’ is a book that traces the life of an unknown Egyptian writer who died in 1963, four years before the release of her only novel. The book does not follow a traditional style to present the biography of Al-Zayyat, or to restore consideration for a writer who was denied her rights. Mersal refuses to present a single story as if it is the truth and refuses to speak on behalf of the heroine or deal with her as a victim, but rather takes us on a journey to search for the individuality that is often marginalised in Arab societies. The book searches for a young woman whose family burned all her personal documents, including the draft of her second novel, and was completely absent in the collective archives.   The narration derives its uniqueness from its ability to combine different literary genres such as fictional narration, academic research, investigation, readings, interviews, fiction, and fragments of the autobiography of the author of the novel. The book deals with the differences between the individuality of Enayat, who was born into an aristocratic family, graduated from a German school and wrote her narration during the domination of the speeches of the Nasserism period, and that of Mersal, a middle-class woman who formed her consciousness in the 1990s and achieved some of what Enayat dreamed of achieving but remained haunted by her tragedy.   The book deals with important political, social and cultural issues, as we read the history of psychiatry in modern Egypt through the pills that Enayat swallowed to end her life on 3 January 1963, while her divorce summarises the continuing suffering of women with the Personal Status Law. We also see how the disappearance of a small square from her neighbourhood reveals the relationship between modernity and bureaucracy, and how the geography of Cairo changes, obliterated as the result of changes in political regimes. In the library of the German Archaeological Institute, where Enayat worked, we find an unwritten history of World War II and, in her unpublished second novel, we see unknown stories of German scientists fleeing Nazism to Cairo. We also see how Enayat’s neglected tomb reveals the life story of her great-grandfather, Ahmed Rashid Pasha, and the disasters buried in the genealogy tree.

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2014

        Farewell, Aleppo

        by Claudette E. Sutton

        The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city's fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed. To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: "exporting" his sons.In December 1940, he told the two oldest, Mea¯r and Saleh, that arrangements had been made for their transit to Shanghai, where they would work in an uncle's export business. China, he hoped, would provide a short-term safe harbor and a steppingstone to America.But the world intervened for the young men, now renamed Mike and Sal by their Uncle Joe. Sal became ill with tuberculosis soon after arriving and was sent back to Aleppo alone. And the war that soon would engulf every inhabited land loomed closer each day. Joe, Syrian-born but a naturalized American citizen, barely escaped on the last ship to sail for the U.S. before Pearl Harbor was bombed and the Japanese seized Shanghai.Mike was alone, a teen-ager in an occupied city, across the world from his family, with only his mettle to rely on as he strived to survive personally and economically in the face of increasing deprivation. Farewell, Aleppo is the story–told by Mike's daughter–of the journey that would ultimately take him from the insular Jewish community of Aleppo to the solitary task of building a new life in America.It is both her father's tale that journalist Claudette Sutton describes and also the harrowing experiences of the family members he left behind in Syria, forced to smuggle themselves out of the country after it closed its borders to Jewish emigration. The picture Sutton paints is both a poignant narrative of individual lives and the broader canvas of a people's survival over millennia, in their native land and far away, through the strength of their faith and their communities. Multiple threads come richly together as she observes their world from inside and outside the fold, shares an important and nearly forgotten epoch of Jewish history, and explores universal questions of identity, family, and culture.

      • Trusted Partner
        January 2013

        The Madmen of Bethlehem

        by Osama Alaysa

        Adopting the story-within-a-story structure of Arabian Nights, author Osama Alaysa weaves together a collection of stories portraying centuries of oppression endured by the Palestinian people.   This remarkable novel eloquently brings together fictional characters alongside real-life historical figures in a complex portrayal of Bethlehem and the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank. The common thread connecting each tale is madness, in all its manifestations.   Psychological madness, in the sense of clinical mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, finds expression alongside acts of social and political madness. Together, these accounts of individuals and communities provide a gateway into the histories of the city of Bethlehem and Palestine. They paint a picture of the centuries of political oppression that the Palestinian people have endured, from the days of the Ottoman Empire to the years following the Oslo Accords, and all the way to 2012 (when the novel was written).   The novel is divided into three sections, each containing multiple narratives. The first section, “The Book of a Genesis,” describes the physical spaces and origins of Bethlehem and Dheisheh Refugee Camp. These stories span the 19th and 20th centuries, transitioning smoothly from one tale to another to offer an intricate interpretation of the identity of these places.   The second section, “The Book of the People Without a Book”, follows parallel narratives of the lives of the patients in a psychiatric hospital in Bethlehem, the mad men and women roaming the streets of the city, and those imprisoned by the Israeli authorities. All suffer abuse, but they also reaffirm their humanity through the relationships, romantic and otherwise, that they form.   The third and final section, “An Ephemeral Book,” follows individuals—Palestinian and non-Palestinian—who are afflicted by madness following the Oslo Accords in 1993. These stories give voice to the perspectives of the long-marginalized Palestinian population, narrating the loss of land and the accompanying loss of sanity in the decades of despair and violence that followed the Nakba, the 1948 eviction of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.   The novel’s mad characters—politicians, presidents, doctors, intellectuals, ordinary people and, yes, Dheisheh and Bethlehem themselves—burst out of their narrative threads, flowing from one story into the next. Alaysa’s crisp, lucid prose and deft storytelling chart a clear path through the chaos with dark humor and wit. The result is an important contribution to fiction on the Palestinian crisis that approaches the Palestinians, madness, and Palestinian spaces with compassion and depth.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The French empire between the wars

        Imperialism, politics and society

        by Martin Thomas

        By considering the distinctiveness of the inter-war years as a discrete period of colonial change, this book addresses several larger issues, such as tracing the origins of decolonization in the rise of colonial nationalism, and a re-assessment of the impact of inter-war colonial rebellions in Africa, Syria and Indochina. The book also connects French theories of colonial governance to the lived experience of colonial rule in a period scarred by war and economic dislocation.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        Rebel populism

        by Philip Proudfoot

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2020

        Victorian literary culture and ancient Egypt

        by Eleanor Dobson

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2021

        Egypt of the Saite pharaohs, 664–525 BC

        by Roger Forshaw

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2016

        Zionism in Arab discourses

        by Ofir Winter, Uriya Shavit

        Zionism in Arab discourses presents a ground-breaking study of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Through analyses of hundreds of texts written by Arab Islamists and liberals from the late-nineteenth century to the 'Arab Spring', the book demonstrates that the Zionist enterprise has played a dual function of an enemy and a mentor. Islamists and liberals alike discovered, respectively, in Zionism and in Israeli society qualities they sought to implement in their sown homelands. Focusing on Palestinian, Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian political discourses, this study uncovers fascinating and unexpected Arab points of views on different aspects of Zionism; from the first Zionist Congress to the First Lebanon War; from gardening in the early years of Tel Aviv to women's service in the Israeli Defence Forces; from the role of religion in the creation of the state to the role of democracy in its preservation. This study presents the debates between and within contesting Arab ideological trends on a conflict that has shaped, and is certain to continue and shape, one of the most complicated regions in the world. ;

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