The Israel-Palestine conflict: a reading list
Six books that shed light on a century of violence
Tensions in the Middle East are a political inheritance of the dissolution of the Ottoman empire after the first world war and the piecemeal settlements of 1922. This landmark book, published in 1989 and named as a finalist for the Pulitzer prize, provides a sweeping account of the period between 1914 and 1922, ranging from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan. It astutely traces the Allies’ motivations for carving up the Arab world and shows why the West’s imperial vision was doomed to fail.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Written in blood”
From the October 21st 2023 edition
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