Mezzaterra [Paperback]

Ahdaf Soueif (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

"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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'Soueif is a political analyst and commentator of the best kind' London Review of Books

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks; First Edition edition (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747577250
• ISBN-13: 978-0747577256
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,953,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Odd collection of essays, May 3, 2007

By 

Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (Paperback)

Ahdaf Soueif is an Anglo-Egyptian novelist of deserved reknown. However, her collection of some 20 years of newspaper commentaries, published as "Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground," does not enhance her writing reputation by much, in I my opinion.

Apart from the opening essay in this book, which explains her theory of "mezzaterra," and one or two of her pieces on modern life in Egypt, most of the collection goes from one angry rant to another. Soueif's indignation is mostly aimed at Europeans, Israelis and Americans who have, in her opinion, abused and disrespected Islamic nations and Islamic people over a long period of time. She launches some vitriol toward the recently ousted Mubarak n government as well.

While her complaints are not unfounded, her voice is so shrill and her moral authority compromised by her self-imposed isolation from the Middle East and its manifold problems. This made me less sympathetic to her perspective. In fairness to Soueif, she was ill-served by a negligent editor at the publishing house who allowed these essays to be pulled together in a haphazard fashion. Overall, I think Soueif's works of fiction are a better investment of the reader's time.