Review – Books

Arzoo Osanloo's Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law and Victims' Rights in Iran takes us through a little discussed feature of the Iranian legal system, which has implications beyond the country...

Haim Bresheeth Žabner's detailed study of the origins and role of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are based on one main observation: Israel is defined by its military. An...

Rashid Khalidi's telling of the story of the loss of his homeland and its gradual invasion is a deeply personal one, and is unlike other more detached accounts I...

Translated 30 years after it was originally published in Arabic as Bab al-Saha, Sahar Khalifeh's Passage to the Plaza is a fast-paced novel that follows a multi-generational cast through...

Whilst literature on Israel's state violence against Palestinian children is nothing new, there are apparent limitations on the current discourse which tends not to extend beyond theories of childhood...

"Under these circumstances, talking to a Western reporter could be a death sentence. And yet here in Douma, as soon as people saw that I was a journalist, they...

The Black Lives Matter protests have brought to the fore the issue of slavery upon which many British fortunes were built. This has led to calls for schools to...

Li Guo's Arabic Shadow Theatre 1300-1900: A Handbook is a sweeping survey and interesting introduction to all things shadowy and theatrical. It is rare to say that an academic...

Most people would agree that it is important for parents to instil a sense of national and cultural identity in their children in order to preserve their heritage for...

It is rare that we come across writings of how people identify with Palestine. Zionist colonisation has created both a displaced population and a contradiction in terms of affinity...

When one thinks of contemporary political Shia Islam the Islamic Republic of Iran tends to spring to mind, a theocracy which those familiar with the subject know is based...

In the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, Palestinians have had to contend with different forms of erasure and fragmentation of Palestinian identity, while acquainting themselves, without choice, with a...

Tribes and Global Jihadism edited by Virginie Collombier and Olivier Roy is the collaborative work of scholars seeking to explore and explain the relationships between the tribal communities of...

Ulf Laessing's book Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi is published at a time when it has never been so important to know what is happening in Libya, but few outside...

This is an important book with an ambitious theme: the blockade of Gaza and the Egyptian government’s significant role in perpetuating it.

International donors have influenced and shaped narratives on Palestine, to the point that to speak about Palestine without reflection is an exercise in disseminating global perceptions and intent. Nadia...

This is a work that will enthral those interested in the intersection of census data, map making using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and politics. It provides insights in the...

The nature of authoritarian rule in Syria remains little understood outside the country. As a notoriously closed society with limited access to the outside world before the 2000s, with...

Ahmed El Shamsy's Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed An Intellectual Tradition takes us into the story of how seminal works of Islamic philosophy, theology,...

From 2013 to 2016, academic and activist Karma Chávez hosted a radio programme which gave voice to people supporting the Palestinian struggle for their rights and justice. Palestine on...

The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought by Andrew F March comes to us at an interesting time. The 2011 Arab Spring led many across the...

"It is particularly in Darwish's poetical progression that Palestine endured and became metaphor." This observation in the introduction to Palestine as Metaphor (Olive Branch Press, 2019) resonates throughout the...

What the news reports eliminate, Ramzy Baroud's new book, These Chains Will be Broken: Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, 2019), pushes to the fore....

"Oh, you're Israeli." "No, I'm not Israeli! I'm Palestinian!" He stared at me for a few seconds in silence and then continued, in the same neutral tone; "Listen, I...

In this ethnographic study, French-Iraqi sociologist Zahra Ali embarks on a unique journey, capturing the voices of Iraqi women of all ages, religions and political persuasions to get a...

The ostracisation of Palestine by the international community to facilitate its exploitation by colonial Israel is portrayed excellently in Palestine Past and Present (Nova Publishers, 2019). This collection of...

Events in the Arab world and beyond over the past decade have ignited an intense debate about Islam, Muslims and political engagement. A common theme of western historical research...

Normalising Israel as a Jewish state absents "Palestinian experience, history and identity claims". Yasmeen Abu Laban and Abigail Bakan, Palestinian and Jewish authors of "Israel, Palestine and the Politics...

For the past few weeks, Lebanon has been rocked by anti-government protests calling for a change in the ruling system and an end to corruption, economic decay and political...

"The rain was not in a docile mood." Huzama Habayeb's opening sentence of her novel Velvet (Hoopoe Fiction, 2019), beckons the reader to delve into intertwining worlds: the extravagance...

One would be at stretch to find another place on earth where the mining of history evokes as much controversy as Palestine. You would struggle even further to name...

It is currently olive harvest season in Palestine, which makes it the perfect time to talk about Yasmin Khan’s book Zaitoun, which translates to 'olive' in Arabic