Roger Allen is one of the dying breed of Fleet Street photographers who has travelled the world taking pictures of royalty, prime ministers, celebrities, war zones, tragedies, bank robberies ... the list is endless. Twice named British Press Photographer of the Year, Rogers tells the story of his 40-year career as a super snapper in his autobiography, The Dark Room Boy. He lives in Guildford, Surrey, and while not still working for the tabloids is on a mission to take pictures of endangere...

Demands for freedom, justice, and dignity have animated protests and revolutions across the Middle East in recent years, from the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring uprisings to Turkey’s March for Justice and the ongoing struggle in Palestine. Although expectations raised by the Arab Spring were largely disappointed and protests that toppled entrenched rulers unleashed vicious counterrevolutionary forces, there is no doubt that the landscape of the Middle East has changed. Drawing ...

Demands for freedom, justice, and dignity have animated protests and revolutions across the Middle East in recent years, from the Iranian Green Movement and the Arab Spring uprisings to Turkey’s March for Justice and the ongoing struggle in Palestine. Although expectations raised by the Arab Spring were largely disappointed and protests that toppled entrenched rulers unleashed vicious counterrevolutionary forces, there is no doubt that the landscape of the Middle East has changed. Drawing ...

In Arabs and the Art of Storytelling, the eminent Moroccan literary historian and critic Kilito revisits and reassesses, in a modern critical light, many traditional narratives of the Arab world. He brings to such celebrated texts as A Thousand and One Nights, Kalila and Dimna, and Kitab al-Bukhala’ refreshing and iconoclastic insight, giving new life to classic stories that are often treated as fossilized and untouchable cultural treasures.For Arab schol...

Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Nayra Atiya gathered the oral histories of five Egyptian men: a fisherman, an attorney, a scholar, a business- man, and a production manager. Through personal interviews over the course of several years, Atiya intimately captured the everyday triumphs and struggles of these young men in a rapidly changing Egyptian society. These tender stories of childhood experiences in the rural countryside, of the rigors of schooling, and of the many challenge...

An award-winning novelist’s vibrant portrayal of the struggle to create a more unified society in medieval Egypt and how this has shaped Egypt today.Brimming with intrigue, adventure, and romance, Al-Qata’i: Ibn Tulun’s City Without Walls tells the epic story of visionary Egyptian leader Ahmad Ibn Tulun who built Al-Qata’i (now Cairo) into a thriving multicultural empire.The novel begins with the rediscovery of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in 1918 and reco...

In this straightforward and authoritative collection of fifteen essays -- each by a different, specialized expert in the field -- readers will encounter all the major elements of Islam, including its history, its beliefs, its practices, and its interactions, notably with Christianity, Judaism, and the modern world. Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith will inform and enlighten all who wish to better understand this increasingly influential world religion.Contributors:

This monumental family saga offers a vivid portrait of Egypt’s Mamluk period, one that is at both sweeping in scope and intimate in detail. Set in medieval Cairo, the novel centers on three generations of Egyptians, foreign-born Mamluks, and their descendants as their trials and victories mirror those of their turbulent country. The first volume, "Sons of the People", introduces us to Zaynab, the daughter of a middle-class merchant in Cairo who catches the eye of the powerful Mamluk amir M...

When celebrated mahjar writer Ameen Rihani returned to his native Lebanon from his long stay in New York, he set out on nine journeys through the Lebanese countryside, from the rising mountains to the shores of the Mediterranean, to experience and document the land in intimate detail.Through his travelogue The Heart of Lebanon, Rihani brings his readers along by foot and by mule to explore rural villages like his childhood home of Freike, the flora and fauna of massive ced...

When celebrated mahjar writer Ameen Rihani returned to his native Lebanon from his long stay in New York, he set out on nine journeys through the Lebanese countryside, from the rising mountains to the shores of the Mediterranean, to experience and document the land in intimate detail.Through his travelogue The Heart of Lebanon, Rihani brings his readers along by foot and by mule to explore rural villages like his childhood home of Freike, the flora and fauna of massive ced...

In this harrowing novel, a young Moroccan bookseller is falsely accused of being involved in jihadist activities. Drugged and carried off the street, Hamuda is "extraordinarily rendered" to a prison camp in an unknown location where he is interrogated and subjected to various methods of torture.Narrated through the voice of the young prisoner, the novel unfolds in Hamuda’s attempt to record his experience once he is finally released after six years in captivity. He paints an unforg...

A master of the short story form, Muhammad Zafzaf is one of Morocco’s greatest narrative writers. This anthology, the first collection of his work translated into English, is a tribute to the remarkable influence he exerted on an entire generation of Moroccan storytellers.Zafzaf’s stories are set within a variety of contexts, each portraying a slice of life, a simple struggle for survival in a challenging world that is changing at a rapid pace. Narrative time is reduced to a single...