Review – Books

Muriam Haleh Davis's new book Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria explores the colonial roots of Algeria's transition into a modern capitalist economy. But it is...

One of the most startling aspects of Israel's ongoing takeover of historic Palestine is how, despite the catalogue of human rights abuse, violations of international law and the practice...

The devastating war in Yemen has been raging for eight years, and with the recent expiry of a UN-brokered truce, conflict between the warring parties remains unlikely to end...

This complex subject is presented with meticulous research by Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi in Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practising Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022). The book goes beyond the...

This new book edited by Jeffrey G. Karam and Rima Majed seeks to make sense of the October 2019 uprising that shook Lebanon. The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices...

Sharing a very personal account of his own incarceration at the hands of the Israeli occupation authorities, MEMO's Palestinian political cartoonist, Mohammad Sabaaneh, offers us a glimpse into this...

Regions such Dagestan, Chechnya and the Caucasus tend to make us think of territories that are firmly under Moscow's control as part of the Russian Federation. However, Russian control...

Human rights, in itself, have long been a contentious industry, developing over the decades and adapting to particular regions and surroundings. It is no different in Palestine, and perhaps...

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear defies order and structure. It is a staggeringly diverse collection and as deep, heavy and haunting as the very days Israel...

It's Christmas Eve in London and Heba Hayek's narrator is looking to bake something that reminds her of home. She settles for basbousa, a coconut yoghurt semolina cake, which...

A prominent part of Israel's colonial violence is the deprivation of free movement for Palestinians. Maryam S. Griffin's book, Vehicles of Decolonisation: Public Transport in the Palestinian West Bank...

Of the 12 official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Ain El-Hilweh ('Ayn Al-Hilwe) is the largest in both area and population and is known among its 33,000 or so...

"It turned out that Syria is our sacred land," wrote a Russian blogger sarcastically in 2016 following attempts by some public figures to recast Syria as part of Russia...

The deployment of the physical body into a site of struggle and resistance remains one of the most poignant and controversial methods of protest. Due to its tremendous toll,...

The concept of martyrdom is one that is shared by all three Abrahamic faiths and one which, by the time of the advent of Islam, was understood firmly by...

Arjomand takes us into the critical and largely invisible work of the media fixer. Defining what  fixers do is difficult as their role can be quite fluid but, essentially,...

"Sovereignty is made out of a patchwork, weaved together from institutions, private companies, and most significantly technology itself, which dictates certain behaviour and habits." Israel's security narrative has become...

A popular Russian-speaking Jewish satirist from Kharkiv, Leonid Osmolovskyi, had become a shadow of his former self by the 1980s. Once famed for his witty essays and part of...

"Debt is about borrowing in the present and repaying in the future. In both cases it is the future that is at stake when debt is thought about as...

Alex Poppe's collection of short stories is a turbulent itinerary of the marginalised. At face value, the observations laid out in Jinwar and Other Stories tend to border on...

In his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture In Modern Egypt, Andrew Simon recounts how, on 12 June, 1974, US President Richard Nixon landed in Cairo for...

Since it was first published in 1959, Naguib Mahfouz's 'Children of the Alley' has drawn objections from scholars at Al-Azhar and instigated an attack on his life. Then in 1988...

"From a deep history perspective, Ottoman rule in Iraq — the land of ancient Babylonia — was a political oddity," writes Faisal Husain in Rivers of the Sultan: The...

Maurice Ebileeni's study of Palestinian literary narratives and the imaginings of the Palestinian homeland highlights the need to rethink both. Being There, Being Here: Palestinian Writings in the World...

How does history look at non-urban, rural populations who lived through the last century of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish republic? Chris Gratien's The Unsettled...

In January 2022, Kazakhstan made international headlines when it was hit by waves of popular protests which were suppressed by the authorities in the Central Asian state. What began...

"Palestine revealed itself to me in layers," reflects Becky Klein, the Jewish American protagonist and narrator in Alison Glick's novel, The Other End of the Sea (Interlink Books, 2021),...

Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity by Elise Burton, is a sweeping history of 'genetic nationalism' in the 20th century covering Iran, Turkey, Israel,...

Jocelyn Hendrickson takes us on a historical and legal tour exploring Islamic responses to Christian conquests in Spain and North West Africa in her book Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law...

Pluto Press has published the fourth, and rewritten edition of Paul Roger's "Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century". The first edition was published a little while after...

"The occupation has remained unchallenged by an international order that seems willing to legitimise it as long as there is no accepted agreement to end it." Sara Roy's succinct...

"Tyranny is the origin of every perversity," claims the author of The Nature of Tyranny and the Devastating Results of Oppression. "Tyranny corrupts the mind by restrictions, and degrades...