“Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author” by Sophus Helle
The Mesopotamian high priestess Enheduana lived over 4,000 years ago, but her words ring down to the present: “I am Enheduana.”
“The Battle for the Soul of Islam: Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21st Century” by James M Dorsey
It can come as a surprise that the largest Muslim (or perhaps more accurately, Muslim-majority) country is Indonesia, far from the religion’s origins in the Middle East. It is—probably as a result—not always included, or at least not centrally, in discourse about Islam. James M Dorsey, on the other hand, puts the country front and…
“The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present” by Allen James Fromherz
Those who have come of age since the 1973 oil embargo should have no great difficulty accepting the outsized importance of the Persian Gulf and the surrounding region. From oil and gas to, more recently, airlines, finance, media and football teams, the countries of the Gulf have influence that far exceeds traditional measurements of power…
“Do Not Ask The River Her Name” by Sheela Tomy
In Sheela Tomy’s new novel, the foreign observer of Israel and Palestine is not the archetypal Westerner, but a middle-aged Indian woman. Translated from Malayalam by Ministhy S, Do Not Ask The River Her Name weaves the past and future into a blood-filled present to tell an emotional and urgent tale.
Podcast with Robert D Kaplan, author of “The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China”
The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear. Internal strife, regional competition and external interventions have been the region’s history for the past several decades.
“The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China” by Robert D Kaplan
As current events in Palestine, Iraq, and the Red Sea attest, the Middle East is a region with much unrest, instability and conflict. However, the region is undergoing a new era of turmoil and transition, headlined by Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Gulf States. As a journalist and author with decades of experience in covering…
Podcast with Adrian Goldsworthy, author of “Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry”
For almost seven centuries, two powers dominated the region we now call the Middle East: Rome and Persia. From the west: The Roman Republic, later the Roman Empire, later the Byzantine Empire. From the East: The Parthian Empire, later replaced by the Sassanian Empire. The two ancient superpowers spent centuries fighting for influence, paying each…
“The Bridesman” by Savyon Liebrecht
Savyon Liebrecht’s novel, The Bridesman, opens with the narrator on a flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv. It’s been twenty-four years since Micha left Israel for the United States and he’s heading back on an all-expenses-paid invitation from his beloved aunt Adella. Liebrecht’s novel, translated from the Hebrew by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann, is a short…
“Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth” by Charles Allen
The venerable Charles Allen left perhaps his most contentious subject for his last (and posthumously-published) book. The Aryans: The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth is a wide-ranging discourse on history, science, archaeology, linguistics, the history of all four, interleaved with commentary on some two centuries of highly-objectionable politics and political discourse:…
“Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry” by Adrian Goldsworthy
Narrative history at its best, Adrian Goldsworthy’s Rome and Persia is informative, readable, carefully sourced, and cautious in its judgments about events that occurred between 90 BCE and the 600s CE in the Mediterranean world, north Africa, and western Asia. It is also instructive about imperial rivalries, geopolitical competition, and human nature across the ages—including…
Podcast with with Toby Matthiesen, author of “The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism”
It was common during the years of the U.S. invasion of Iraq to talk about the Sunni-Shia split—and how the sectarian violence was the result of a “centuries-long hatred” between the two different religious schools. But seeing this divide as the result of a longstanding feud—or to see it in the model of other religious…
Podcast with Seema Alavi, author of “Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire”
It’s one of the strange artifacts of history that Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, was once controlled by the Sultanate of Oman. In 1832, then Sultan Sayyid Saïd bin Sultan al-Busaidi made the island his capital, with the empire split in two upon his death: one based in Muscat, one based in Zanzibar.
Podcast with Rudi Matthee, author of “Angels Tapping at the Wine-Shop’s Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World”
When meeting an expatriate friend on my first trip to Dubai, the host at the restaurant where we were meeting quickly ushered me up to the second floor. For foreigners, he said—before handing me a wine list. Dubai’s tolerance of alcohol is a more formalized version of Muslim tolerance—and clandestine drinking—of alcohol that dates back…
“Sovereigns of the Sea: Omani Ambition in the Age of Empire” by Seema Alavi
Oman and the connected history of Zanzibar is something those of us of a certain age (and especially those of us who used to collect stamps) perhaps knew to at least some extent, but then (also perhaps) largely forgot as the Arabian Peninsula rearranged itself around the ever-increasing political and economic clout of Saudi Arabia…
“Every Rising Sun” by Jamila Ahmed
Sometimes you must write the book you want to read. In the afterword to her debut novel Every Rising Sun, Jamila Ahmed remembers growing up with The Arabian Nights as “a cultural touchstone” while always “wanting more of her”. The “her” is, of course, Shaherazade, the teller of life-prolonging fantastical tales.
