Three Books I read in 2024
At the beginning of every year I typically set a goal to read a set number of books. While most of the books I read deal with the history of the Middle East, I try to read on a broad spectrum of topics including general history, current events, and human interests/memoirs/biographies, and general fiction (typically novels, but also graphic novels like Shubeik Lubeik and Persepolis). However for the purpose of this blog I will only write about books that are relevant to the Middle East. As this year ends, I would like to highlight three books I’ve read in the last year that I find particularly relevant to understanding the region and its history.
Shlaim, Avi; Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew; Oneworld Publishers: 2023
Avi Shlaim is known as one of the “new historians” in Israel, a group of historians who challenged several of the foundational myths of Israel’s establishment, particularly those around the 1948 War. Others include Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. These historians emerged in the 1980s and have aroused a fair degree of controversy in Israel. Much of Shlaim’s early works focused on Israel’s relations with its Arab Neighbors, especially the Kingdom of Jordan.
Shlaim’s memoir details his upbringing in 1940’s Iraq, migration to Israel in the 1950s, and his eventual education in the UK. The primary focus of Shlaim’s book is his childhood as an Iraqi Jew and the tumultuous years of early independence. What makes Three World’s worth reading is the detail of life in the Iraqi Jewish community in the early to mid-20th century and how the Ashkenazi Zionism impacted the community. Shlaim at the very least insinuates that Israeli assets were responsible for a series of bombing of Jewish sights in Baghdad to encourage Jewish migration to Israel.
The Shlaim family, like many Iraqi Jews, ended up migrating to Israel in 1950s. Shlaim’s memoir provides insight into the experiences of Mizrahi Jews who migrated to Israel at that time. In Israel, the Mizrahi were often treated as second-class citizens and many like the Shlaims had come from prosperous backgrounds abroad. A great companion read to Three Worlds is Ariel Sabar’s My Father’s Paradise.
Matar, Hisham; The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land Between; Knopf Publishers: 2016
Hisham Matar is British-Libyan writer and son of prominent dissident Libyan Jaballa Matar. Jaballa Matar was a Libyan diplomat and critic of Muammar Qaddafi who fled Libya in 1979 and was eventually abducted in Cairo and returned to Libya in 1990. Hisham’s novels include In the Country of Men and the upcoming My Friends.
The Return details Matar’s return to Libya following the fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011 and his quest for answers about what really happened to his father. Weaving between the past and the present, Matar paints a vivid picture of life in exile. His personal narrative is both powerful and relevant to anyone concerned about the long arm of authoritarian governments. Throughout the book, it is evidently clear the lengths that autocrats will go through to silence dissent even when it is worlds away.
Cobb, Paul M; The Race to Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades; Oxford University Press: 2014
Dr. Paul M. Cobb is a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the University of Pennsylvania and specializes in pre-modern Islamic history. He is widely published and his works include White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria, 750-880 and Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades.
Dr. Cobb’s The Race for Paradise is a sprawling history Muslim and Western Christian military encounters from Spain to the Levant between 1000-1500 CE. The book is meant to provide an Islamic perspective of the Crusades so much of the early history begins with the early days of the Reconquista and the Norman conquest of Sicily. Only later do we get to Pope Urban’s call to retake the Holy Land. In writing such a sprawling narrative, Cobb does a superb job of connecting events across space and time in a cogent manner. One area that is lacking, partly by design, is a discussion of the politics of Western Europe that is driving one end of these conflicts, but if your goal is to learn more about the internal politics of the Islamic World during this period, this is an excellent place to start. It is a far superior work to Amin Maalouf’s The Crusades through Arab Eyes.
