At the start of this year, a number of uprisings in the Middle East moved the region center stage in the arena of international politics. In a short amount of time, the Arab world from Morocco to Oman was consumed by protests—and in the politically extreme cases, two revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt have resulted in overthrowing the heads of state of those nations. Some have even speculated that the Arab Spring has begun to turn into the European Summer, with protests in Spain occurring at the end of May. Quite noteworthy to many commentators has been the impact of social media in these uprisings: interactive news feeds, video, and live updates were, and still are, crucial to spreading the word.
YUP has a notable list of political area studies and histories of countries. For example, earlier this year, we released Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak, by journalist Tarek Osman, who was in Cairo throughout the uprisings and managing to interview with news outlets despite the turmoil. Together with Victoria Clark’s Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakesand Martin Evans’ and John Phillips’ Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, we compiled a free chapter sampler, “Crisis in the Arab World”, available for download in Kindle, ePub, and PDF formats. Given the weekend events in Yemen, with President Saleh fleeing to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, now is a good time to think about these roads to revolution and what the implications are for the Arab world and the global network of participants and onlookers.
After being shortlisted for the Griffith Poetry Prize earlier this year, Syrian poet Adonis and his handpicked translator, Khaled Mattawa, won the prestigious Goethe Prize in Germany for our Margellos World Republic of Letters title: Adonis: Selected Poems. Born in Syria in 1930, Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world. In this volume, the full span of Adonis’s career as a poet is brought to English readers for the first time. Adonis, who calls himself “the pagan poet” (once referred to by Edward Said as “today’s most daring and provocative Arab poet”), will accept the prize later this summer in Frankfurt.
And be sure to check out the New York Times profile by Charles McGrath from the poet’s tour around the US last fall.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, few people in America had heard of the Taliban. And in 2000, when Ahmed Rashid wrote the bestselling Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,based on his experiences as a journalist covering the civil war in Afghanistan for twenty years, traveling and living with the Taliban, and interviewing most of the Taliban leaders since their emergence to power in 1994, the book offered, and still does, the only authoritative account of the Taliban available to English-language readers. Last year, we published a second edition with a new introduction and an all-new final chapter.
Now that the story continues with the recent death of al-Qaeida leader, Osama bin Laden, Rashid has been interviewing and writing op-eds about bin Laden’s role within the organization and what his death means for the future. Yesterday, he appeared alongside John McLaughlin, Yochi Dreazen, and Paul Pillar on WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show, with guest host Susan Page. He also had an op-ed that ran in the Financial Times, and his book was even referenced in the New York Times obituary for bin Laden. Today, you can listen to Rashid as he interviews on WHYY’s Fresh Airwith Terry Gross.
Accompanying “Five Poems from Kabbalah”, published in the spring issue of The Paris Review, is an online interview with translator, Peter Cole. His forthcoming book of translations from Hebrew, The Poetry of Kabbalah, will be published next year by YUP as part of the Margellos World Republic of Letters series.
Together with his wife, Adina Hoffman, Cole founded Ibis Editions, a small literary press based in Jerusalem, with a special dedication to publishing overlooked writing in the languages of the Levant region: Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, French, and other smaller languages. They are no strangers to literary patronage there; recently, Hoffman published the first (and only) biography of a Palestinian poet: My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century, retelling the history of the village of Saffuriyya through the remembrance of native Taha Muhammad Ali, and Cole co-translated a volume of Ali’s work, So What, published by Copper Canyon Press.
On a related note, the North American edition of Philip Mansel’s Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, an historical survey of the cities of Smyrna, Alexandra, and Beirut,is about to be published by YUP. These three cities were financial and cultural centers of the region, and Mansel’s narrative begins with the sixteenth-century French alliance with the Ottoman Empire, showing how the cross-continental development of lingua franca was crucial to the Levant’s cosmopolitan role between Europe and Asia.
Like all good works of literature, these books show that language—specifically as an obstacle of translation—has undeniable impact on how foreign concepts are shaped and reinterpreted within cultural boundaries. How else could we hope to understand the abstract poetry that Cole notes for “its sheer potency and the steepness of its metaphysical ambition”? We have writers, historians, and especially, translators to thank.
In the midst of recent events in the Middle East, YUP is offering a special look at the books that cover religion, politics, and culture of the region, and our authors who are active in contributing to these discussions.
Last month, Marwan Muasher gave a talk at Yale as part of the Jackson Senior Fellows Lecture Series, titled “The Arab World in Crisis: Redefining Arab Moderation.” As a top-ranked diplomat, Muasher has held many high-level positions within the government of Jordan, including Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Ambassador to the United States, and first Jordanian Ambassador to Israel. He is the author of The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation, written prior his appointment as a fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His recent talk readdresses the issues he presents in his book—the promise and perils of taking the “middle road” toward peace in the Middle East and what must be done to encourage the development of moderate, pragmatic Arab voices—and on YouTube, there is a full lecture from a similar talk he gave that was sponsored by the International Development Research Centre.
For Women’s History Month, we have a forthcoming study of the political and cultural history of the veil over the past half century: A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, written by Leila Ahmed, the first professor of Women's Studies in Religion at Harvard University and currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at Harvard’s Divinity School. Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, she asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations, reaching surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West today.
And in looking back on Egypt, where so much action at the start of this year has sparked movement across social media and traditional news outlets—oh, and something of a revolution, too?—we have Egyptian journalist, Tarek Osman, with his newly published book: Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak. His prescient analysis foretold the roles that young Egyptians assumed in determining the future of their nation. The chapter “Young Egyptians” is part of YUP’s “Crisis in the Arab World” free book sampler, also featuring chapters from Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, by Martin Evans and John Phillips, and Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, by Victoria Clark, both areas where similar uprisings have begun to stir. The sampler is now available for free download with your choice of PDF, Kindle, and ePub files.
For good measure, watchTarek Osman talk Egyptian politics on Al Jazeera English, the Arabic news network that has provided so many important real time updates throughout these tumultuous times.
The events of January and February 2011 have shaken not only the Middle East and North Africa but the whole world.
Starting in Tunisia in December 2010, unrest has spiraled through the Arab world, with extraordinary results: following mass uprisings, the Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben-Ali has fled the country, while his counterpart Hosni Mubarak of Egypt decided to stand down with immediate effect. Meanwhile, Algeria – also ruled by a military dictatorship – has seen major riots, with several protestors killed, while similar demonstrations in Yemen have led President Saleh to announce that he will not seek another term in office.
Click the 3D book display to download Crisis in the Arab World, a free sampler of Yale books that discuss these three febrile regions.
In Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak(2011), Tarek Osman looks at the situation of his fellow young Egyptians – tech-savvy and full of passion, but deeply frustrated by the corrupt, economically stagnant Egyptian state.
In Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (2008, updated 2011), Martin Evans and John Phillips ask how long Algerians will put up with their repressive military regime, whose only opposition consists of intermittent al-Qaeda attacks.
In Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes (2010), Victoria Clark analyses the prospects for a country with 40% unemployment, near-exhausted water supplies, and a long-running rebellion in the southern provinces.
Egyptian journalist Tarek Osman is, as you might guess, in Egypt. He's not been attacked or detained, and we were able to break through the chaos and put him in touch with WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show and PRI's The World, to give his take on the current political climate, having just published Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak.
Listen to the discussions on the rise and decline of Arab nationalism with WNYC and the Pharaohdom of Mubarak with PRI.
@David_Rogers: Everyone is abuzz with the Network Is Your Customer book launch, free chapters, reviews, and most importantly, grabbing a copy! Learn more on Twitter with #TNIYC and #sobelbrite hashtags, and be sure to check out the author’s site to catch up!
@Drudge_Report: Headlines like Matt Drudge’s “EGYPT ON THE BRINK” abound after protests erupted, calling for the end of President Mubarak’s term. Tarek Osman, author of our newly published Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak, has now written an op-ed for CNN.com on the current political climate.
In light of the recent bombing in Alexandria, Egyptian banker and writer, Tarek Osman, has been interviewed by the London Times and CNN for his take on the current political situation. Today we have published Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak, in which Osman describes the huge changes that have taken place in his home country since the 1950s.
Writing for the Financial Times, Joyce Tyldesley opines that Osman's and two others, Egypt: A Short History (Princeton U Press) and The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (Bloomsbury) together give a picture of Egypt's history from ancient times to the present, brought into "sharp focus." For Osman's book in particular, addressing the last sixty years, she says: "Osman writes with a focused and uncluttered style, and there are enough political twists and high-action events – including a president assassinated live on television – to retain the interest of even the most general reader."
To learn more about the political forces at play in Egypt (regime, political Islam, and the liberal movement, as defined by Osman), check out the interview with CNN.
Not one, but two, important literary events are on the horizon: Adonis, the esteemed Syrian poet, will be in New York on Monday, October 25 at the 92nd Street Y and at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center on Tuesday, October 26; both are readings from his newly published book, Adonis: Selected Poems.
Adonis is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world, and this volume serves as the first comprehensive survey of Adonis's work,allowing English readers to admire the arc of a remarkable literary career through the labors of the poet's own handpicked translator, Khaled Mattawa.
In the meantime, you can read more about Adonis and his thoughts on poetry in today’s New York Times profile by Charles McGrath.
