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4+ Werken 142 Leden 3 Besprekingen

Werken van Peter Theroux

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The Middle East, I knowledgeably said once to a friend, is an impossible stew.

Years later I am none the wiser, which fact has been clearly but needlessly illustrated after reading Peter Theroux's excellent Sandstorm: Days and Nights in Arabia. Written in the 1980s, it of course presents a much different picture, but the thing of it is, I am still so vague on the politics of that region that you could probably have fooled me into thinking it was rather more recent or more dated.

Here, the young Peter has landed in Saudi Arabia by way of Egypt. Egypt itself he is quite taken with; he speaks of the dignity of the Egyptians owing to their rich, deep history as one of the world's great civilizations. It is this clear-eyed journalistic skill that drew me in right away, and I was glad of the decision to pick up this book at the sale because of that weighty last name. In this case, blood is very much thicker than water, if I have my sayings straight; Peter is the brother of the great Paul.

Anyhow, the young Peter in Riyadh quickly finds it an inscrutable place. The many religious edicts and lashings (!) of chauvinism only serve to heighten the sense of being in a hall of mirrors- all compounded by his fascination for a missing politician, one Imam Moussa Sadr. This Sadr is widely speculated to have been offed in Libya but is also rumored to be floating around in Italy. (Theroux later goes on to write a book on the subject.) Then there are the locals, who while strictly following the religious precepts seek out booze and sex as voraciously as anyone. (Of the local women, there are none save the young girls who make random telephone calls in hopes of chatting with other girls or then anyone who speaks English.) Theroux himself produces highly-forbidden wine along with a friend, hilariously naming the red and white ones Scarlett and Blanche in conversations on their tapped phone lines.

But all that seems almost incidental, if interesting. What gives this account its real heft is his grasp of the prevailing politics there. And it is that which bogged me down, as usual. The Saudis have a love-hate fling with the Americans, the Israelis bomb Beirut but also Palestine, Egypt and Syria have it in for each other, Iran and Iraq are at war, but the Libyans have a different axe to grind...or is it that the Egyptians and the Lebanese hate each other? No matter how good Theroux's writerly hand is, it's all too much for my feeble brain to keep straight.

In the end I am glad I read it. I must seek out more of his works and to my great joy I find that our very own city of angels is a subject of one such.

More reviews at https://devikamenon.blogspot.com/search/label/books
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dmenon90 | 2 andere besprekingen | May 8, 2019 |
2360 Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia, by Peter Theroux (read 22 Feb 1991) Because Saudi Arabia is, these days, at the center of all my thoughts, with a son there, I read this book about an American in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast countries. It is quite out of date, though it was just published in 1990. Saudi Arabia is a weird place, and it bothers me how little respect it has for fundamental freedoms, like freedom of religion. It is a country living in the 8th century.
 
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Schmerguls | 2 andere besprekingen | May 21, 2008 |
I read this ages ago but it still stays with me. It was the sort of book the keep me enraptured so that I stayed up all night reading. At about 2 a.m. I was done and I felt like I would have to sweep the sand out of the sheets before I could fall asleep.
 
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Clueless | 2 andere besprekingen | Mar 7, 2008 |

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Werken
4
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3
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142
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#144,865
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