The Arab Dream Palace: Nationalism, Secularization, and the Dilemma of the Modern Middle East
About This Novel
On June 6, 1982, war broke out on the Lebanese border, and Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon in three groups. Late that night in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, the poet Khalil Harvey walked to the balcony of his home with a shotgun in his hand, facing the sea and the school bell tower, aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger. His body fell over the railing and fell to a cluster of jasmine flowers downstairs. Eight days later, Israeli troops approached Beirut. The final straw for Harvey was not only the shame of the country's defeat, but also the despair of the entire Arab nation's revival. For more than half a century, countless Arabs, including Harvey, have envisioned a dream palace of unity, progress, and modernity for their world. However, the quarrel between traditionalists and reformists, the confrontation between secularism and theocracy, local hatred of the West, and increasingly narrow nationalism eventually exhausted the hope in the hearts of Arabs. In this book, Lebanese scholar Fouad Ajami reviews Arab history since the 20th century from the perspective of politics, culture, and literature through a pair of eyes from inside the Arab world. He follows the life and thinking paths of Arab intellectuals such as Harvey, Adonis, Mahfouz, and Munif, from the mountains of Lebanon to Egypt to the Arabian Peninsula, telling the story of the revitalization and suffering that this great and tenacious nation has experienced over the past few decades, trying to answer a question that has been pondered for nearly a hundred years: Where is the path to modernization in the Arab world?
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