Showing results for "memoir" in Middle East

When Lisa Najeeb Halaby was 26, her father introduced her to King Hussein of Jordan. Within a year, she became his fourth wife. Born in 1951 to a distinguished Arab-American family, Lisa was unsure what her role would be. King Hussein was not only the head of state in Jordan but also considered the spiritual leader of all Muslims. This memoir provides a vital perspective on 30 years of turbulent world history from the Arab point of view.

In 1982, 16-year-old Marina Nemat was arrested on false charges by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and tortured in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. At a time when most Western teenaged girls are choosing their prom dresses, Nemat was having her feet beaten by men with cables and listening to...

In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing their beloved Iraq to the new state of Israel. Today the once flourishing Jewish community of Iraq, at one time numbering over 130,000 and tracing its history back 2,600 years, has all but vanished.

LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “I am forever changed after reading this book.” —Javier Zamora, author of Solito From the renowned Palestinian scholar, a memoir of political and queer awakening, of impossible love amidst generations of displacement, and what it means to return...

An intimate account of the Israel-Palestine conflict and beyond, from one of Australia's most experienced foreign correspondents. Now updated with a foreword by Stan Grant and a new author's note. 'Lyons knows if you stand with the suffering, you're closer to the truth' Stan Grant, award-winning...

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century’s bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom. In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends—fellow working-class college...

In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.

When Anthony Shadid—one of four New York Times reporters captured in Libya as the region erupted—was freed, he went home, not to Boston, Beirut, or Oklahoma, where he was raised by his Lebanese American family, but to an ancient estate built by his great-grandfather, a place filled with memories of a lost era when the Middle East was a world of grace, grandeur, and unexpected departures.

Born in 1949 to a prosperous family in Tehran, Abbas Milani grew up in an Iran of culture and tradition. He was sent to the United States for his studies, and it was there that he made his transition to adulthood, becoming active intellectually, sexually, and politically. Flush with 1960s idealism, he returned home in 1975, only to find his country utterly changed.

An award-winning journalist’s extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years—a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that’s “the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful” (The Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist...

This program includes a bonus conversation between the author and editor. An all new recording of Out of Egypt, André Aciman's acclaimed memoir, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini! From the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt is a richly colored memoir chronicling...

A CIA station chief, later Jordan's lawyer in Washington, reveals the secret history of a lost peace.

Jack O'Connell possessed an uncanny ability to be at the center of things. On his arrival in Jordan in 1958, he unraveled a coup aimed at the young King Hussein, who would become America's most reliable Middle East ally. Over time, their bond of trust and friendship deepened. His narrative contains secrets that will revise our understanding of the Middle East.

“A deeply felt memoir of race and history that defies social erasures of the diasporic Palestinian experience, They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful boldly explores how politicized identities, especially within the US, are shaped and manipulated by broader agendas.” —The Whiting Award...

Faleeha Hassan became intimately acquainted with loss and fear while growing up in Najaf, Iraq. Now, in a deeply personal account of her life, she remembers those she has loved and lost.

From retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell comes a compelling firsthand account of the blow-by-blow plays of the actual raids that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003. When U.S. forces exterminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, the world witnessed a brilliantly fruitful example of history repeating itself; less than a decade earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a triumph of military strategy in and of itself, opened the door for the more recent and essential victory in the War on Terror. At the center of the six-month manhunt were Lt. Col.

May 6, 1986: Nick Popaditch arrives at the Receiving Barracks, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. April 9, 2003: An AP photographer captures a striking image seen around the world of the Gunny Sergeant smoking a victory cigar in his tank, the haunting statue of Saddam Hussein hovering in the background. Popaditch is immortalized forever as "The Cigar Marine."

At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who...

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 30-year span in the life of a generation that witnessed a shift from traditional order to revolutionary flux.

A gripping, deeply moving memoir of survival, education, and resistance by a student protestor–turned–political prisoner in post-revolution Egypt. “I will never be the same after reading Huna.” —Javier Zamora “A beautifully written portrait of a radical political awakening.”...