Arab Rebirth: Pain and Ecstasy Book

Jacques Berque has distilled a lifetime's passionate study of Arab history and culture into this eloquent essay Arab Rebirth: Pain and Ecstasy shifts effectively from pre-Islamic Arabia to twentieth-century Morocco; theology to linguistics; desert oasis to urban slum; T E Lawrence to Nasser; and poetry to the politics of oil. Berque presents a perceptive synoptic portrait of a civilization in the grip of change. This book conveys all the misery of a situation still stamped by centuries of foreign domination, and all the hope of a renaissance now an hundred years old and yet still in its infancy.