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Title details for Dining with al-Qaeda by Hugh Pope - Available

Dining with al-Qaeda

Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East

by Hugh Pope
Paul Boehmer
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
An Oxford-educated scholar of the Middle East and a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Hugh Pope lived and worked in two dozen countries throughout the region. Following in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton and Lawrence of Arabia, Hugh Pope's explorations of the people, politics, religion, and culture of Islamic nations shows there is no such thing as a monolithic "Muslim World." His probing and often perilous journeys—at one point he is forced to quote Koranic verse to argue against his being murdered by a top al-Qaeda leader—provide an eye-opening look at diverse societies often misportrayed by superficial reporting and "why they hate us" politics.


With U.S. foreign policy under President Obama aiming to engage more constructively with Muslim nations, this lyrical and often poetic voyage is one of the truly important books of our times.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 31, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400196517
      • File size: 471166 KB
      • Duration: 16:21:35

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Pope's disjointed memoir of getting to know the Middle East--from Afghanistan to the Sudan--attempts to inform the listener and demystify the region. Narrator Paul Boehmer mostly tries too hard, affecting a sonorous, rounded tone that sounds out of place. His tone inserts him between the listener and the text and takes a lot of getting used to. Further, while Pope is South African and British, Boehmer's accent is thoroughly American. His efforts to inject twinkly humor into some phrases are awkward. He makes the gaffe (in this book) of pronouncing [Edward] Said as "sed," though his pronunciations of foreign words are convincing and his foreign accents mostly creditable. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 23, 2009
      The 30 years Pope (Sons of the Conquerors
      ) has spent living and traveling in the Middle East, from a 1980 visit as an Oxford student through a decade-long stint as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal
      , color this reflection on the region's recent history. Moving back and forth through time in vignettes set in Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, this fascinating memoir of his career tackles subjects as varied as the sexual attitudes of Middle Eastern men, the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Iraq-Iran War, and the poetry of the mystic Persian poet Hafez. The text has a loose episodic structure that sometimes feels desultory, though it does end with a series of chapters that focus on Iraq in the years before and after the American invasion. The author's writing is journalistic but imbued with the author's personality and long involvement in the region—he decries uncritical American support for Israel and the West's tendency to treat Islam and Muslim cultures monolithically. Pope's exquisite photographs accompany his vivid panorama of the region.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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