A beautiful, tragic, and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziad? Blending the author's years of research with a personal memoir and more than 300 illustrations, this compelling history of the modern Arab world explores the major thinkers, struggles, and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today. Ziad?begins in South Lebanon, the 'land of martyrs, ruins and passion', before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Damascus, and Gaza. The book moves from 1967 to 2006 tracing the Arab world's downturn and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the rise of an especially intolerant wave of Islam. Within these pages, there are the blasts of explosions, blood, tears and tragedy, wreaths, flowers and ribbons, refugees, and paradise. Ziad?unearths the buried memory of resistance fighters and their lost ideals. She celebrates the progressive, bold
