A History of Disappointment

Avi Shlaim

  • The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey by Fouad Ajami
    Pantheon, 368 pp, US $14.00, July 1999, ISBN 0 375 70474 4

Fouad Ajami’s The Dream Palace of the Arabs is at once an intellectual tour de force, and an intimate and perceptive survey of the Arab literary, cultural and political worlds. Ajami was born in Southern Lebanon and raised in Beirut, and he has a rare ability to listen to and convey his culture’s inner voice. Equally rare is the quality of his English prose. Like Conrad, of whom he’s an admirer, Ajami fell under the spell of the English language, and this new book displays his skills as scholar, as stylist and as literary critic.

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