Publisher's Synopsis
This wide-ranging examination of Arab society and culture offers a unique opportunity to know the Arab world from an Arab point of view. Halim Barakat, an expatriate Syrian who is both a scholar and a novelist, emphasizes the dynamic changes and diverse patterns that have characterized the Middle East since the mid-19th century. His is a picture that differs dramatically from the static one portrayed by much of Western scholarship. Barakat maintains that the unequal power relationships between Western imperial forces and Arabs have strongly influenced Western writing, thereby limiting our understanding of what it means to be Arab.;The Arab world is not one shaped by Islam, or one simply explained by reference to the sectarian conflicts of a "mosaic" society. Instead, Barakat reveals a society that is highly complex, with many and various contending polarities. It is a society in a state of becoming and change, one whose social contradictions are at the root of the struggle to transcend dehumanizing conditions.
