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“... has for nearly three millennia been imposed from outside – is not as controversial as it may sound. Historians of the Levant and North Africa have chipped away at the notion that the label ‘Phoenician’ is useful for talking about the experiences, beliefs, networks or practices of such a heterogeneous group of ancient people.Quinn’s contribution ...”

“... like critical legal studies and critical legal sociology. These movements scrutinise what may be called the cultural self-constitution of law. They attempt to trace exactly how the law goes about establishing its own splendid eminence. In so doing, they adopt an external perspective on the law, keenly aware of the outward mechanics of its ...”

“... a satire on affluent America. Suddenly it comes to me that this is one gap in literature that I may be uniquely placed to plug. Consulting a map of London, I see how I might be able to skate across the city from park to park, from Regent’s Park to Vauxhall Gardens via Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’s Park. Such an epic skate would be more than just ...”

“... both, but it’s not a politically motivated novel. The madness of the Cultural Revolution years may form a distinctive backcloth, but very firmly in the foreground is that familiar figure, the love triangle. As the title suggests, not very much happens in Waiting. Lin Kong, a medical officer in the People’s Liberation Army, is forced by his dying mother ...”

“... assumes a largely anthropological readership, and a concomitant level of knowledge: an outsider may find the rather lengthy discussions of technical aspects of kinship not always riveting. A less austere account of the lives of the anthropologists might have made up for this. Stocking notes that at the LSE Malinowski was not content with supervising his ...”

“... God Himself. As Lewis notes, this would be ‘a claim of far-reaching implications’. Indeed, it may have implications for the fundamentalist Muslim Khilafa movement so active in Britain today. Chapter Six of The Arabs in History was prefaced by a quotation from Rimbaud’s Illuminations, though its title, ‘The Revolt of Islam’, echoed that of ...”

“... presidents of our countries, and even the wars we join in and the treaties we sign.’ As all this may suggest, Arab fiction is mostly political (and some would add that Arab politics is mostly based on fiction). The Syrian novelist Halim Barakat doesn’t allow for any choice in the matter: ‘Contemporary Arab writers have been preoccupied with themes of ...”

“... the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; lest they should turn again and be ...”

“... it’s at the cost of abandoning all responsibility, as she runs towards a helicopter that may contain anyone: Americans? Frelimo? Cubans? ‘Saviours or murderers’, it no longer matters: ‘She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take ...”

“... lord will one day be known as the god of war,’ and that the pact between God and men may amount only to ‘two articles, namely, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ Satan, in a bitter recasting of his characterisation in The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, ‘is just another instrument of the lord, the one who does the dirty work ...”

“... wound than exile, and I suspect (perhaps because of my familiarity with Israeli society) that it may have deformed political discourse in Israel even more than the Nakba has deformed political discourse among Palestinians. A recent poll shows that the majority of Israelis conceive their national identity to be based on the Shoah, and the cynical exploitation ...”

“... who were charged with the maintenance of the scrolls exercised considerable licence, one may infer, in expanding or modifying their contents, incorporating elements of oral lore and inventing new materials. As Toorn trenchantly puts it, ‘the books of the Bible were not designed to be read as unities. They rather compare to archives. A biblical book ...”

“... Half-belief is formally honoured in a visit to the tomb of Unamuno in Salamanca, but doubts may occur at any time: ‘How is it that when I speak of belief, I become aware always of a shadow, the shadow of disbelief haunting my belief?’ and ‘I am riddled by doubts. I am sure of nothing, not even of the existence of God ... Oh, I want to believe that ...”

“... a means of communication between strangers. The traveller who gives his character to these novels may have come from the Eastern United States – as do Theroux himself and several of his narrators – but that isn’t important. This traveller brings next to nothing with him – none of the conventional assumptions or idiosyncrasies of the older generation ...”

“... over the authenticity of the Ossianic poems, making the point that whatever the final verdict may be on the question of forgery, it is well to remember that no great Scottish writer has failed to display questionable, if not criminal, characteristics in regard to his personal character or in connection with his work, and that, even if the charges against ...”