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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
A timely and unprecedented examination of how the modern Middle East unravelled, and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979.
“What happened to us?”
For decades, the question has haunted the Arab and Muslim world, heard across Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in the author’s home country of Lebanon. Was it always so? When did the extremism, intolerance and bloodletting of today become the norm?
In Black Wave, award-winning journalist and author Kim Ghattas argues that the turning point in the once-promising history of the Middle East can be located in the toxic confluence of three major events in 1979: the Iranian revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Before this year, Saudi Arabia and Iran has been working allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region - but the radical legacy of these events made mortal enemies of both, unleashing a process that transformed culture, society, religion and geopolitics across the region for decades to come.
Drawing on a sweeping cast of characters across seven countries over four decades, Ghattas demonstrates how this rivalry for religious and cultural supremacy has fed intolerance, suppressed cultural expression, encouraged sectarian violence, birthed groups like Hezbollah and ISIS and, ultimately, upended to the lives of millions. At once bold an intimate, Black Wave is a remarkable and engrossing story of the Middle East as it has never been told before.
Kim Ghattas is an Emmy Award-winning journalist born and raised in Lebanon who has spent 20 years covering the Middle East for the BBC and Financial Times. This well-researched book argues that 1979 set Saudi Arabia and Iran on a path that’s shaped the Middle East. Ghattas has a readable style and I came away feeling but there are a lot of figures in play here and despite a useful list, I sometimes found myself confused about who was who.
Ghattas has clearly done a lot of research for this book - there’s an extensive array of sources at the back - and she had a good feel for the drivers at play here between Iran and Saudi Arabia and how it impacted upon the region. However, there is less of a feel for the personalities at play here, notably Khomeini, which is a shame because politics is so often personal and it would have been useful to know more about the individuals driving the events and it would have made it easier to distinguish between the various people mentioned. This would have been particularly helpful in the case of the Saudi royal family as the various monarchs and princes seem interchangeable and it is not until the later chapters and the focus on Muhammad bin Salman that there is a sense of personal drive at play.
The central argument of the book is that 1979’s Iranian revolution, siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca and the Society invasion of Afghanistan together worked to shape the current Middle East. Ghattas certainly does a good job of pulling these strands together to explain why she believes it was the case. As someone who does not know a huge amount about the region, I came away feeling like I had more of a grasp about what has been happening and the mix between religion, politics and international relations. This is helpful when it comes to Lebanon, where Ghattas does a great job of laying out the rise of Iranian-backed Hamas (something which is all the more tragic given events in 2024).
The book takes in almost all the main countries in the Middle East and their relationship with Iran and Saudi with Ghattas setting out how individual leaders, including Assad, Saddam Hussein and Arafat sought to bring them on side for their own agendas. The one notable omission is Jordan, which barely gets mentioned at all, despite the fact that it borders Saudi, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and is home to one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps.
All in all, I thought this was a really interesting read that provided useful background to the region and has provided perspective to recent events and as such, it is definitely worth a few hours of your time.
The Verdict:
Kim Ghattas is an Emmy Award-winning journalist born and raised in Lebanon who has spent 20 years covering the Middle East for the BBC and Financial Times. This well-researched book argues that 1979 set Saudi Arabia and Iran on a path that’s shaped the Middle East. Ghattas has a readable style and I came away feeling but there are a lot of figures in play here and despite a useful list, I sometimes found myself confused about who was who.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
“What happened to us?”
For decades, the question has haunted the Arab and Muslim world, heard across Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in the author’s home country of Lebanon. Was it always so? When did the extremism, intolerance and bloodletting of today become the norm?
In Black Wave, award-winning journalist and author Kim Ghattas argues that the turning point in the once-promising history of the Middle East can be located in the toxic confluence of three major events in 1979: the Iranian revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Before this year, Saudi Arabia and Iran has been working allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region - but the radical legacy of these events made mortal enemies of both, unleashing a process that transformed culture, society, religion and geopolitics across the region for decades to come.
Drawing on a sweeping cast of characters across seven countries over four decades, Ghattas demonstrates how this rivalry for religious and cultural supremacy has fed intolerance, suppressed cultural expression, encouraged sectarian violence, birthed groups like Hezbollah and ISIS and, ultimately, upended to the lives of millions. At once bold an intimate, Black Wave is a remarkable and engrossing story of the Middle East as it has never been told before.
Kim Ghattas is an Emmy Award-winning journalist born and raised in Lebanon who has spent 20 years covering the Middle East for the BBC and Financial Times. This well-researched book argues that 1979 set Saudi Arabia and Iran on a path that’s shaped the Middle East. Ghattas has a readable style and I came away feeling but there are a lot of figures in play here and despite a useful list, I sometimes found myself confused about who was who.
Ghattas has clearly done a lot of research for this book - there’s an extensive array of sources at the back - and she had a good feel for the drivers at play here between Iran and Saudi Arabia and how it impacted upon the region. However, there is less of a feel for the personalities at play here, notably Khomeini, which is a shame because politics is so often personal and it would have been useful to know more about the individuals driving the events and it would have made it easier to distinguish between the various people mentioned. This would have been particularly helpful in the case of the Saudi royal family as the various monarchs and princes seem interchangeable and it is not until the later chapters and the focus on Muhammad bin Salman that there is a sense of personal drive at play.
The central argument of the book is that 1979’s Iranian revolution, siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca and the Society invasion of Afghanistan together worked to shape the current Middle East. Ghattas certainly does a good job of pulling these strands together to explain why she believes it was the case. As someone who does not know a huge amount about the region, I came away feeling like I had more of a grasp about what has been happening and the mix between religion, politics and international relations. This is helpful when it comes to Lebanon, where Ghattas does a great job of laying out the rise of Iranian-backed Hamas (something which is all the more tragic given events in 2024).
The book takes in almost all the main countries in the Middle East and their relationship with Iran and Saudi with Ghattas setting out how individual leaders, including Assad, Saddam Hussein and Arafat sought to bring them on side for their own agendas. The one notable omission is Jordan, which barely gets mentioned at all, despite the fact that it borders Saudi, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and is home to one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps.
All in all, I thought this was a really interesting read that provided useful background to the region and has provided perspective to recent events and as such, it is definitely worth a few hours of your time.
The Verdict:
Kim Ghattas is an Emmy Award-winning journalist born and raised in Lebanon who has spent 20 years covering the Middle East for the BBC and Financial Times. This well-researched book argues that 1979 set Saudi Arabia and Iran on a path that’s shaped the Middle East. Ghattas has a readable style and I came away feeling but there are a lot of figures in play here and despite a useful list, I sometimes found myself confused about who was who.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
