Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
36
result(s) for
"Farhi, Moris"
Sort by:
TIES OF BLOOD
Father sprouted from that shoot of David which circumambulated Jerusalem's stones after the Dispersion which recognised Yahweh in all His other names which decked in Ottoman turbans helped raise the Levant as an ark for all races all cultures which shook hands with shepherds and artisans sipped tea with poets musicians and courtesans dressed janissaries and equerries waged war and peace on backgammon boards graced weddings circumcisions christenings funerals everywhere between Damascus and Sarajevo Algiers and Batumi
Journal Article
Kite By Dominique Edde Seagull Books, Pounds 16
The Lebanese writer Dominique Edd presents such an example with her novel Kite - originally written in French, still a lingua franca of the Levant, and impeccably translated by Ros Schwartz. Boldly multi-layered, Kite has as its primary strand the passionate affair between Mali, an aspiring Lebanese writer, and Farid, an eminent Egyptian philologist. Their liaison starts in the 1960s. She is 28 and married; he is 40, also married. The story, interspersed with sections of a memoir by Mali herself, has as its milieu the Levantine haut monde - metaphorically, the kite \"that has the right to go in any direction that crosses borders, blurs them, pushes them back\".
Newspaper Article
Lost dreams of three ports in a storm
The abiding sorrow of this lament serves as a leitmotif in [Philip Mansel]'s Levant. This is a masterly work: by focusing on the see-sawing fortunes of Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut - extolled as \"queens\" of the Levant - Mansel exposes the problems of achieving coexistence in a world fragmented by disunion. Although most cities can epitomise humanity's existential struggles, Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut stand as unique symbols of achievable utopias. Since, until the demise of the Ottoman Empire, these cities were still imbued with its spirit, much of their ethos of cosmopolitanism derived from the predisposition of the early, progressive Sultans to forge alliances with Christian powers. When France's Franois I was captured by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent not only secured his release, but instituted an accord. This Franco-Ottoman alliance led to a set of concessions from the Ottomans, known as capitulations, that would prove a boon to Christendom. In time, capitulations were granted to other European powers, including England, and formulated \"the legal basis of European presence in the Levant\". They permitted Christian foreigners to live and trade outside Ottoman sharia law and allowed them \"freedom of dress and worship\", freedom from Ottoman taxation and, most importantly, the freedom, except in cases of murder, \"to be judged by their own laws in their consul's courts\".
Newspaper Article