The life of Taj al-Saltaneh, daughter of the ruler of Iran, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, epitomized the predicaments of her changing era. Overcoming her limited education within the harem walls, Taj chronicled a thirty-year span in the life of a generation that witnessed a shift from traditional order to revolutionary flux. It is as though she had chosen this moment to recall her personal history—a tale filled with “wonder and anguish”—in order to record a cultural and political leap, symbolic...

A gripping historical novel set in 11th century Persia that imagines the life of poet and philosopher Omar KhayyamAccused of mocking the inviolate codes of Islam, the Persian poet and sage Omar Khayyam fortuitously finds sympathy with the very man who is to judge his alleged crimes. Recognising genius, the judge decides to spare him and gives him instead a small, blank book, encouraging him to confine his thoughts to it alone.Thus begins the seamless blend ...

Shah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete failure. Yet even as Iran becomes a 'behemoth of riches' and as the Shah lives like a European billion...

From Fouad Ajami, an acclaimed author and chronicler of Arab politics, comes a compelling account of how a generation of Arab intellectuals tried to introduce cultural renewals in their homelands through the forces of modernity and secularism. Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering m...

In times of war and in peace, from the earliest days of the Roman Empire to our own, Westerners have journeyed to the lands of the middle east, bringing back accounts of their adventures and impressions. Yet it was never a one way exchange. From the first Arab embassy to the Vikings in the 9th century to the internet musings of the Taliban, A Middle East Mosaic collects a rich, boisterous literature of cultural exchange.We see the American Revolution through the ey...

The "fascinating . . . lively" story of the Russian slave girl Roxelana, who rose from concubine to become the only queen of the Ottoman empire (New York Times).In Empress of the East, historian Leslie Peirce tells the remarkable story of a Christian slave girl, Roxelana, who was abducted by slave traders from her Ruthenian homeland and brought to the harem of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent in Istanbul. Suleyman became besotted with her and fores...

In Naguib Mahfouz's suspenseful novel a bitter and ambitious nihilist, a beautiful and impoverished student, and a corrupt official engage in a doomed ménage à trois.Cairo of the 1930s is a place of vast social and economic inequities. It is also a time of change, when the universities have just opened to women and heady new philosophies imported from Europe are stirring up debates among the young. Mahgub is a fiercely proud student who is determined to keep both his poverty and hi...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017'An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book' Yuval Noah Harari**'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra'It strikes a blow…for common humanity' Sunday Times**The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Yet in this sweeping narrative and provocative retelling of modern history, C...

Khan al-Khalili, by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, portrays the clash of old and new in an historic Cairo neighborhood as German bombs fall on the city.The time is 1942, World War II is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt. Against this backdrop, Mahfouz’s novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo’s colorful and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the Germ...

Azar Nafisi, author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.A girl's pain over family secrets; a young woman's discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval - these and other threads are woven...

This journalist's portrait of life in Iran just after the Revolution is "a book of great economy and power [with] a supreme sense of the absurd" ( New Republic).Iran, 1980: the revolutionaries have taken charge. In a deserted Teheran hotel, Ryszard Kapuściński tries to make journalistic and human sense out of the mass of notes, tapes, and photographs he had accumulated during his extended stay in Iran. Just what happened and how? What did Khomeini have to o...

**Taha Hussein's classic autobiographical novel The Days helped usher in the era of modern Arabic writing and remains one of the most influential and best-known works of Arabic literature"It is difficult to overstate Taha Hussein's contribution to the intellectual renaissance in Egypt during the 20th century."—The Guardian**The monumental three-part autobiography of one of modern Egypt's greatest writers and thinkers is again available in a single paperbac...