Taking a cue from Iona, here are the English language paperbacks I’ll take with me to Damascus. As most waking hours will be spent in Arabic, from the intensive 5-hour-a-day classes to communicating with locals and struggling with newspapers and television, I suspect I’ll need some downtime to rest my head with some light reading.
Demystifying Syria (ed. Lawson)
This recently published collection of essays on Syrian politics, economics and diplomacy is part of a series from my Masters degree alma mater and comes recommended by Joshua Landis.
A History of the Arab Peoples (Hourani)
A go-to reference I used during my history course at SOAS. Open to any page and it sucks you in.
An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict (Monk)
I got Jennifer this for her birthday last year, though neither of us has read it yet. It’s about how monuments central to the Israel/Palestine conflict, such as Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock aka the Temple Mount, became invested over the last 60 years with conflicting values, intertwined with the identity politics of the moment, and turned into “terrible caricatures” of themselves. Sounds to me like a bold new take on an aspect of reconciliation which isn’t usually explored in the mainstream.
Lonely Planet: Middle East
Basic practical stuff and some pretty decent sounding itineraries for Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Egypt.
Media Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary
Okay so it’s not exactly an English language book, but it’s an extremely useful glossary of contemporary vocab that I’ve been consulting the past couple years to help familiarize myself with common buzz words and phrases that come up in the native media all the time.
أستاذ سرحان (Ustadh Sirhan)
Okay so it’s not an English book at all but a children’s book, so it makes my “things that won’t make my head hurt” list. It’s an Arabic copy of Mr. Daydream from the awesome Mr. Men series. See the cover here!
I’d really appreciate any other suggestions.
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