Dream Palace of the Arabs : A Generation's Odyssey is a fascinating, sad look at a lost generation of Arab intellectuals. The author, Fouad Ajami, explores Pan-Arabism and Arab Nationalism through the lense of Arabic arts and letters.
It starts off, naturally enough, with the 1982 suicide of Lebanese poet Khalil Hawi—an event that stands for Ajami as a metphor for the fate of the pro-modernization political-intellectual movement. It then moves on to an exploration of a generational divide—between Arab secular nationalists and the now dominant Islamists—through the art of Adonis, Sadiq al-Azm, Abdelrahman Munif, and Nizar Qabbani. With that as background, the author then provides a more detailed look at Egypt in the aftershock of Sadat's assassination; the novelist Naguib Mahfuz plays a central role in this chapter. Finally, the Arab reaction to Israel is revealingly illustrated through the writings and statements of a number of men (and one woman) of Arabic letters.
Ajami, a nominally Eastern Orthodox Arab raised in Beirut and now teaching in America, is extremely well-suited for the task. He is himself a member of this generation and with exquisite pain and tenderness, yet also with brutal honesty, revealing the seemingly missed potential of this lost generation's dreams. At times, particularly in the beginning (which addresses the fall of Lebanon), this is an emotionally difficult book; the grand ideas and the author's affection for old Lebanon are downright depressing reading when you know where it's all heading. In the later chapters, particularly those dealing with the secular vs. Islamist divide during the Gulf War and with Israel and the various "peace processes", the mood is less tense—although perhaps this is because I personally feel less of a sense of loss over the rest of the Arab world than I do over Lebanon's demise.
Article comments
1 - Kieran Dickinson
Ajami has a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal called "The Moor's Last Laugh." For more on it, see my blog.
2 - Lameen
As the book makes very clear, Fouad Ajami is nominally Shia, not nominally Eastern Orthodox.
3 - daveinboca
I had the privilege of knowing Fouad closely when he first came to SAIS in 1980 and he was first my houseguest and then my renter after my marriage. Fouad talked much about his south Lebanese Shi'ite roots and his "outsider" POV, although his father gained wealth as a Beirut contract engineer/builder. Fouad was reading The Raj Trilogy and a lot of Freud while he was my houseguest and his knowledge of French and American culture rivals his encyclopedic knowledge of Islam and the grievance mindset of the Shi'ites.
Fouad's first and deepest loves are for Egypt and, when I knew him, an incredible fascination with India.