Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground [Paperback]

When Booker Prize finalist Soueif (The Map of Love) moved from Egypt to London in 1984 to live with her husband, she became one of thousands of "people with an Arab or a Muslim background living in the West and doing daily double-takes when faced with their reflection in a Western mirror." Her sense of the disconnection between Arab life as she knew it and its portrayal in Western media only deepened after the Persian Gulf War began, the second intifada erupted and America invaded Iraq. For the past four years she has found "the situation so grave [that she has] written hardly anything that does not have direct bearing on it." The 38 pieces collected here—some are works of reporting; most are essayistic book reviews—establish Soueif as the intellectual heir to Edward Said, the Palestinian scholar who was a personal friend of hers until his death in 2003. Like Said, Soueif insists that "the discord between the Arab world and the US is entirely to do with Israel." She speaks longingly of the 1960s, when, she says, political tensions were low enough that Arabs and Westerners could meet on common ground and "differences were interesting rather than threatening, because they were foregrounded against a backdrop of affinities." Though she sometimes appeals to emotion over hard facts, her prose reads smoothly and her observations on the misery inflicted by recent conflicts are thoughtful indeed. (Oct.)
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“Soueif is a political analyst and commentator of the best kind.” –London Review of Books

“Marvellous. . . . A writer of special importance. . . . Her combination of centred gravity, minute precision and insistent humanity generates highly clarified truth.” –The Independent --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Globalisation is happening. It is driven by economics, ideology and communications. But does this have to entail the annexation of chunks of the world by the Great Power of any given moment? Surely that is the path to constant conflict, to grief and misery. There is another way: to inhabit and broaden the common ground. This is the ground where everybody is welcome, the ground we need to defend and to expand. It is in Mezzaterra that every responsible person on this planet now needs to pitch their tent. This is the ground from which this book is calling." Ahdaf Soueif is one of the finest commentators of our time. Her clear-eyed reporting is syndicated throughout the world, and these essays, written between 1981 and the present, are collected here for the first time. They are the direct result of Soueif's own circumstances of being, as she puts it, "like hundreds of thousands of others: people with an Arab or a Muslim background doing daily double-takes when faced with their reflection in a western mirror". From visiting Palestine and entering the Noble Sanctuary for the first time, to interpretations of women who choose to wear the veil, and to post-September 11th commentary, these selected essays are always perceptive, fearless, intelligent and necessary.

“Soueif is a political analyst and commentator of the best kind.” –London Review of Books

“Marvellous. . . . A writer of special importance. . . . Her combination of centred gravity, minute precision and insistent humanity generates highly clarified truth.” –The Independent --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo. She is the author of Aisha, Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and the bestselling novel The Map of Love which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. She has translated I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti from Arabic into English. She also is a journalist and commentator and her work is syndicated throughout the world.