From Pawns to Global Powers: Middle East Nations Strike Back
Former ambassador Chas Freeman, Jr. argues that we have entered a new era in which players are shifting on the geopolitical chess table.
Tag: Saudi Arabia
Yogurt, Surveillance and Book Covers
Malu Halasa finds unexpected tastes, pleasures and upsets at the 2023 London Book Fair.
Attack on Salman Rushdie is Shocking Tip of the Iceberg
An attack on one writer anywhere is an attack on freedom of expression everywhere.
Music in the Middle East: Business can’t Buy Authenticity
180,000 electronic music aficionados attended the SOUNDSTORM festival in Riyadh this month, but as columnist Melissa Chemam writes, "it is impossible not to see these events as a part of the country’s soft power and policy to whitewash its terrible human rights record."
Hayy Jameel — Jeddah’s Sparkling New Center for the Arts
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is home to a major new arts and cultural center, opening to the public on December 6, 2021.
Traveling in Contentious Spaces — Saudi Arabia
When friends in Abu Dhabi asked Deborah Williams how she could support MBS by going to “his” festival, she didn’t have an answer, only another question: how do we draw the lines around where we will or won’t go?
The Promotion (a short story from Saudi Arabia)
What happens when an immigrant professor dresses to impress in a bid to land tenure at a Saudi university? A short story by Waqar Ahmed paints a humorous picture.
The Murals of Yemen’s Haifa Subay
Yemen street artist, activist and mother Haifa Subay speaks to Farah Abdessamad about the state of the country and her work.
In Yemen, Women are the Heroes
International aid worker and writer Farah Abdessamad has been traveling to Yemen for work since 2014. This is the first time she has written about her experiences there publicly.
Ten Years of Hope and Blood
In which Egyptian-Syrian-French journalist and novelist Robert Solé considers the Arab awakenings across the region.
You Drive Me Crazy, from “Bride of the Sea”
In this debut novel Eman Quotah practically delivers an epic as she writes about a Saudi family, torn between Arab and American identities and culture clashes.
Interlink Proposes 4 New Arab Novels
New literature translated from abroad is a cause for celebration.
New Book Traces Roots of Saudi-Funded Extremism
The Saudi sect of Wahhabism—an extreme and merely 200-year-old iteration on Islam—exercises a dangerously pervasive influence on imams and believers.
A Humanitarian Catastrophe: Understanding the War in Yemen
Why is it that Americans know so little about Yemen, why has the country seemed so off the radar to us?
Refugee from the War in Yemen
For those who know little about Yemen, sometimes learning about distant disaster through a human story is the best way to come to grips with it.