March-April 2024 New Arrivals

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March/April 2024, pp. 65, 67

New Arrivals

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi, Picador, 2021, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $19.99. The best-selling book of 2023 at Middle East Books and More! Rashid Khalidi, the foremost U.S. historian of the Middle East, offers the first general account of the “conflict” told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of his family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats and journalists—this book upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend—at best—to describe a tragic “clash” between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces 100 years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile “peace process.” The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating view of a conflict that continues to rage. 

Behind You Is the Sea: A Novel by Susan Muaddi Darraj, HarperVia, 2024, hardcover, 256 pp. MEB $26. Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three families—the Baladis, the Salamehs and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in the U.S. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode. The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister after accusations of “dishonoring” the family. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations. Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on, and masterfully weaves a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts and devastating secrets.

The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance by Shaul Magid, Ayin Press, 2023, paperback, 318 pp. MEB $22.95. What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations’ answers to these questions, and the future of Jewish life will depend on how we respond to them in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition. On many levels, Zionism was conceived as an attempt to “end the exile” of the Jewish people, both politically and theologically. In a series of incisive essays, Magid challenges us to consider the price of diminishing or even erasing the exilic character of Jewish life. A thought-provoking work of political imagination, The Necessity of Exile reclaims exile as a positive stance for constructive Jewish engagement with Israel-Palestine, anti-Semitism, diaspora and a broken world in need of repair.

The Oud: An Illustrated History by Rachel Beckles Willson, Interlink, 2023, hardcover, 256 pp. MEB $40. According to a literary tradition of Iraq, the origin of the oud lies in the grief of Lamak, a descendent of Cain, son of Adam. When his five-year-old son died, Lamak hung the boy’s limp body on a tree, and as time passed, he resolved to build a musical instrument from the remaining bones. He then played it, wept and sang the first lament; his daughter Sila became an instrument maker. Thus, the oud is a beautiful pear-shaped box, with neck and strings, that makes music, but it can also be a link to the world of storytelling that brings new voices to life. The oud is one of the most important instruments in music cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, and while associated mainly with the Arab world, it is also played in Iran, Türkiye and Greece. More recently it has spread into East Africa, Europe, Australia, the Americas, China and Japan. This book explores the oud’s history and explores its varied construction over time and place, revealing its widespread repertoire and immensely diverse players.

Novel Palestine: Nation Through the Works of Ibrahim Nasrallah by Nora E.H. Parr, University of California Press, 2023, paperback, 232 pp. MEB $40. Palestinian writing imagines the nation, not as a nation-in-waiting, but as a living, changing structure that joins people, place and time into a distinct set of formations. Novel Palestine examines these imaginative structures so that we might move beyond the idea of an incomplete or fragmented reality and speak frankly about the nation that exists and the freedom it seeks. Engaging the writings of Ibrahim Nasrallah, Nora E.H. Parr traces a vocabulary through which Palestine can be discussed as a changing and flexible national network linking people across and within space, time and community. Through an exploration of the Palestinian literary scene subsequent to its canonical writers, Parr makes the life and work of Nasrallah available to an English-language audience for the first time, offering an intervention in geography while bringing literary theory into conversation with politics and history. 

Egypt Under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge by Maged Mandour, I.B. Tauris, 2024, hardcover, 224 pp. MEB $27. Since the coup of 2013 ended Egypt’s brief democratic experiment and Abdel Fattah El-Sisi became president, his regime has unleashed mass repression and severe restrictions on an unprecedented scale. This has been characterized by arbitrary arrests, forced disappearances and the torture of real—or suspected—political activists and dissidents. The Sisi regime has not only entangled the country in political violence, but has also mired Egypt in a deep economic crisis. Written by Egyptian political analyst Maged Mandour, Egypt Under El-Sisi includes analysis of primary sources, such as laws and constitutional amendments issued by the regime, statements made by regime officials and local media, as well as official economic data from state sources and international organizations. Mandour explains exactly how Sisi operates and what makes his regime so different—and so dangerous—compared to those that came before.