Based on diaries and email correspondence that she kept from 1981-2004; here Suad Amiry evokes daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Capturing the frustrations; cabin fever; and downright misery of her experiences; Amiry writes with elegance and humor about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another; the torture of falling in love with someone from another town; the absurdity of her dog receiving a Jerusalem identity card when thousands of Palestinians could not; and the trials of having her ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law living in her house during a forty-two-day curfew. With a wickedly sharp ear for dialogue and a keen eye for detail; Amiry gives us an original; ironic; and firsthand glimpse into the absurdity—and agony—of life in the Occupied Territories.
#208829 in Books 2003-09-09 2003-09-09Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.00 x .90 x 5.20l; .69 #File Name: 1400032202336 pages
Review
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. A great work. Martin Amis at his bestBy GiannuzzoA great work. Martin Amis at his best. A chilling portrait of Stalin; sometimes a baffoon sometimes a genius. Successful politicians tend to be ruthless; but in a grim survival of the fittest milieu of the Bolshevik state it seems that a man of Stalin's ability and Machiavellian brilliance would rise to the top. The amazing thing is that even today there are those among us who still deny the Ukrainian famine and the Great Famine or worse yet try to justify them.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. "Koba the Dread" lives up to its title; for its view of this most important of monstersBy physics studentThis book concentrates on Stalin's abnormal psychology; and the impacts of his murderings on Russia; which was his greater victim. Amis is very good on the twisted workings of Stalin's mind. I read Francis Carr's "Ivan the Terrible" more or less simultaneously; the pathology was more or less the same. Ivan Grozny did even more damage to Russia than did Stalin.Amis also shows the moral putridity of the British intellectual class in confronting monstrosities.For bald narrative I would read Conquest first. For insider detail; Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Young Stalin" and "In the Court of the Red Tsar"; but for emotional impact; Amis is hard to beat; for this the most important maker of the modern world.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Terrible; just like it should be.By Arturo VargasKoba The Dread made me want to get rid of it. It made me mad; and left me thinking about the terror that we can cause by taking fixed ideas to the limits. The book is a great description of what happened under Lenin and Stalin's power. It's documented and with enough references to other authors and players involved with the Soviet Union. If you want a bunch of cold history thrown at you to wake up; this is a great book that will do just that.
