"The Arab Dream Palace: Nationalism, Secularization, and the Dilemma of the Modern Middle East" Author: [US] Fuad Ajami Series: Ideal Country Translation Series

Reviewing Arab history in the 20th century from the perspectives of politics, culture and literature

Based on the life and thoughts of dozens of Arabs including Adonis

Explore a century-old question:

Where is the Arab world's path to modernization?

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On June 6, 1982, war broke out on the border of Lebanon, and Israeli troops invaded southern Lebanon in three directions. Late that night in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, the poet Khalil Harwi walked to his balcony with a shotgun, facing the sea and the school clock tower, and pulled the trigger at his head. His body fell over the railing and fell next to a cluster of jasmine flowers downstairs. Eight days later, the Israeli army arrived at the gates of Beirut.

The last straw that broke Harvey's back was not only the humiliation of his country's defeat, but also the despair of the entire Arab nation's revival. For more than half a century, countless Arabs, including Harvey, had envisioned a dream palace of unity, progress, and modernization for their world. However, the quarrels between traditionalists and reformists, the confrontation between secularism and theocracy, the hatred of the West, and the increasingly narrow nationalism eventually exhausted the hope in the hearts of the Arabs.

In this book, Lebanese scholar Fouad Ajami looks back at Arab history since the 20th century from the perspectives of politics, culture, and literature through a pair of eyes from inside the Arab world. He follows the life trajectories and thinking paths of Arab intellectuals such as Harvey, Adonis, Mahfouz, and Munif, from the mountains of Lebanon to Egypt and then to the Arabian Peninsula, and tells the story of the revival and sufferings experienced by this great and tenacious nation over the past decades, trying to answer a question that has been pondered for nearly a hundred years: Where is the path to modernization in the Arab world?

About the Author · · · · · ·