A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.
Another damning exposé on the authoritarian crown prince of a problematic state.
Al-Rasheed, a longtime Saudi expat scholar and professor living in London, makes an important addition to the literature on Mohammed bin Salman (often known as MBS), offering a surgical delineation of his repressive measures in the name of "reform"—while arguing that real reform is possible. The charming prince, who assumed the role of heir-designate in 2017, was seen as a modernizer and reformer, and he has both celebrated and hindered the aspirations of young Saudis. Before the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the Western press mostly celebrated MBS, allowing him a sliver of legitimacy as he simultaneously promoted his purge of opponents and seduced the public with more liberal entertainment policies. The author, who displays keen knowledge of her former home, looks deeply at some of the troubling and persistent currents plaguing MBS's Saudi Arabia: a new populist nationalism, which she believes "covers up" nefarious economic, social, and regional policies of the crown prince; persistent tribalism and celebration of tribal purity; and the consistent targeting of the Saudi feminist movement. The chapter entitled "Women and Rights" is an excellent examination of a contradictory element that is ever present in the prince's policy: the ostensible empowerment of women (allowing them to drive and be more visible) versus punishment for chafing against the paternalistic "guardianship system." Al-Rasheed is especially familiar with the Saudi diaspora and the increased activism since the murder of Khashoggi. All of these developments, she writes, "puncture the official narrative about Muhammad bin Salman’s modern new Saudi Arabia." However, the author notes that low oil prices, continued war in Yemen, the erosion of state services and salaries, and the ravages of the pandemic may prompt Saudis to challenge the policies of the prince. Read this one alongside Bradley Hope’s Blood and Oil and Ben Hubbard’s MBS.
A penetrating spur to imagine an alternative political system of civil liberties in a now firmly repressive Saudi Arabia.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-755814-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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