Bøker av Ghada Karmi

A tale of love and passion in medieval Baghdad.It is spring of the year 830. Baghdad, the capital of a vast Islamic empire, is one of the world’s most glorious cities. Its ruler is an intellectual, a forward-thinking caliph who champions reason and the pursuit of knowledge against the forces of ignorance and superstition. The Caliph’s court has become a dazzling academy of poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians—a picture of a vibrant, self confident, pleasure-loving society. Yet, it bears the fateful seeds of future strife. The Sunni-Shia divide, religious fanaticism, and the stirrings of Islamist extremism all started then. These themes emerge as the story of a passionate love that ends in murder unfolds. The book opens with the Caliph at death’s door, struck down by a mysterious illness. His condition worsens as physicians desperately search for a cure. Only Abu Mansour al-Tabrizi, Baghdad’s most famous doctor, is able to diagnose the cause. The Caliph’s malady is a love-sickness akin to madness for a beautiful, young woman named Murjana. It is an affliction with only one remedy: marriage. But Murjana is from a Shia family, and such a union could pose danger to a Sunni caliph and a Sunni society. From the start, forces are at play which threaten the caliph's happiness. And yet the controversial marriage of Murjana and the Caliph goes ahead and captures Baghdad under its spell. The story of their love becomes an ode to the power of passion to erase boundaries. But enmity and vengeance stalk them, and only when tragedy strikes does division and conflict reveal their futility.

Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, 'beautiful, but married to another man'. By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestine, where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve. No conflict today is more dangerous than that between Israel and the Palestinians. The implications it has for regional and global security cannot be overstated. The peace process as we know it is dead and no solution is in sight. Nor, as this book argues, will that change until everyone involved in finding a solution accepts the real causes of conflict, and its consequences on the ground. Leading writer Ghada Karmi explains in fascinating detail the difficulties Israel's existence created for the Arab world and why the search for a solution has been so elusive. Ultimately, she argues that the conflict will end only once the needs of both Arabs and Israelis are accommodated equally. Her startling conclusions overturn conventional thinking -- but they are hard to refute.

A radical case for a one-state solution from the renowned Palestinian writer and Nakba survivor

Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, 'beautiful, but married to another man'. By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestine, where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve.*BR**BR*No conflict today is more dangerous than that between Israel and the Palestinians. The implications it has for regional and global security cannot be overstated. The peace process as we know it is dead and no solution is in sight. Nor, as this book argues, will that change until everyone involved in finding a solution accepts the real causes of conflict, and its consequences on the ground. *BR**BR*Leading writer Ghada Karmi explains in fascinating detail the difficulties Israel's existence created for the Arab world and why the search for a solution has been so elusive. Ultimately, she argues that the conflict will end only once the needs of both Arabs and Israelis are accommodated equally. Her startling conclusions overturn conventional thinking - but they are hard to refute.