{"id":557,"date":"2004-09-11T11:15:07","date_gmt":"2004-09-11T15:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=557"},"modified":"2004-09-11T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2004-09-11T15:15:07","slug":"amin-maalouf-books-i-forgot-were-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=557","title":{"rendered":"Amin Maalouf: Books I forgot were good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s <a title=\"The Globe and Mail\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/ArticleNews\/TPStory\/LAC\/20040911\/BKREAD11\/\/?query=maalouf\">The Globe and Mail<\/a> there is a review essay about terror that included a review of In the Name of Identity by <a title=\"Amin Maalouf\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aminmaalouf.org\/english\/\">Amin Maalouf<\/a>. I knew that name was familiar and, browsing his site, realized he had written two great novels I had forgotten, one a historical novel, Leo the African and the science-fiction novel, First Century after Beatrice. I&#8217;m embarassed that I didn&#8217;t connect those two novels. Time to read more of his work, especially on identity and terror as an antidote to the possible orientalism of Western writers like Bernard Lewis.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nAs the Globe reviewer, Todd Gitlin, writes, &#8220;Tracting the failure of modernization in the a Arab world, he (Maalouf) unveils the inner logic by which religious sealots recruit.&#8221; (&#8220;Tomes of Terror&#8221;, The Globe and Mail, &#8220;Tomes of Terror&#8221;, D23.)<br \/>\nFor a critique of Lewis, whose book What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity int he Middle East is an accessible summary of a liberal (and problematic) view of Islam, see<br \/>\n<a title=\"M. Shahid Alam: Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/alam06282003.html\">M. Shahid Alam: Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?<\/a> in Counterpunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today&#8217;s The Globe and Mail there is a review essay about terror that included a review of In the Name of Identity by Amin Maalouf. I knew that name was familiar and, browsing his site, realized he had written two great novels I had forgotten, one a historical novel, Leo the African and the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=557\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Amin Maalouf: Books I forgot were good<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}