A remarkably evenhanded biography of an important player in Arab history that doubles as a crucial scholarly...
Biography of the famous early-20th-century Arab nationalist and soldier Fawzi al-Qawuqji (1890-1977).
Parsons (History and Islamic Studies/McGill Univ.; The Druze between Palestine and Israel, 1947-49, 2000) offers a short but satisfying account of the life and military adventures of al-Qawuqji, a passionate supporter of Arab unity who played a significant role in many of the conflicts that gave rise to the modern Middle East. The author provides brief sketches of al-Qawuqji’s character, but recounting and contextualizing his eventful life is her main focus. Following al-Qawuqji from his early days soldiering for the Ottoman Empire to his role in major anti-colonial revolts in Syria, Palestine, and Iraq, Parsons conveys the epic sweep of his life and his importance to Arab history in matter-of-fact terms: “[His] life was the story of one individual, not the history of a nation. He found himself in particular places, made particular choices, and even fought particular battles, largely as a result of personal circumstances.” The author’s style is determinedly unromantic—a feature, not a flaw. The effect of her careful, analytical approach is to dismantle various myths and misinterpretations that have developed around the period. For example, in writing about the British invasion of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Parsons notes, “of course the better-known story about Arabs in World War I is that of the pro-British Arab Revolt of 1916, helped by the British officer T.E. Lawrence. But in military terms the Arab Revolt was a sideshow.” In addition to a much-needed biography of al-Qawuqji, the author provides a history of the heyday and collapse of Arab nationalism. Especially in writing about al-Qawuqji’s leadership of the Arab Liberation Army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Parsons is unerring in pointing to the factional rivalries and structural difficulties that impeded cooperation between the fledgling Arab states.
A remarkably evenhanded biography of an important player in Arab history that doubles as a crucial scholarly reinterpretation of the rise and fall of Arab nationalism.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8090-6712-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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