What are the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why has it proved so intractable, and what are the implications of escalating tensions for both the Middle East and the world?

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the most bitter struggles of modern times, with consequences that are felt around the globe. In this comprehensive, stimulating and fully up-to-date overview, Michael Scott-Baumann succinctly describes its causes and charts its history from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Adopting a unique approach, each chapter starts with a lucid explanation of the politics and ends with personal testimony from the diaries, interviews and memoirs of Israelis and Palestinians whose lives have been marked by conflict. By presenting competing interpretations from both sides, Scott-Baumann examines the key flashpoints of the twentieth century, including the early role of the British, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the dramatic impact of the Six-Day War of 1967. The latter part of the book focuses on the nature of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, and resistance to it – a matter at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent decades.

The result is an indispensable account for anyone seeking to understand the context behind today’s headlines, including analysis of why international efforts to restore peace have continually failed.

From the award-winning writer and thinker, an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramifications

‘Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding’ NAOMI KLEIN

‘Mishra has made a powerful contribution to the moral history of the world’ ANDREW O’HAGAN

‘Urgent’ HISHAM MATAR

‘Brilliant’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Memory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe’s civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel’s policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world – the ‘darker peoples’, in W. E. B. Du Bois’s words – the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation – freedom from the white man’s world.

The World After Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority’s frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population.

As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis – about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future.

The religious wars of the crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.

In the first history of its kind, Steve Tibble explores the criminal underbelly of the crusades. From gangsters and bandits to muggers and pirates, Tibble presents extraordinary evidence of an illicit underworld. He shows how the real problem in the region stemmed not from religion but from young men. Dislocated, disinhibited, and present in disturbingly large numbers, they were the propellant that stoked two centuries of unceasing warfare and shocking levels of criminality.

Crusader Criminals charts the downward spiral of desensitisation that grew out of the horrors of incessant warfare-and in doing so uncovers some of the most surprising stories of the time.

A gripping account of survival and recovery from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie

‘A masterpiece? Extraordinary’ Daily Telegraph
‘A story of hatred defeated by love’ Guardian

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was sitting onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery.

This an intimate meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again

A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, INDEPENDENT, EVENING STANDARD, NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER AND TIME

‘An incandescent book about love and hard-won survival’
The Times

‘Salman Rushdie is a genius? A brave book by a brave man’
Evening Standard

‘Gripping? It reminds us of the things worth fighting for’
New York Times

No.1 Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024

A Book of the Year in The Observer, The New York Times, TIME, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and shorlisted for the Waterstones Debut Prize for Fiction

‘Dazzling’ Ann Patchett
‘Profoundly moving’ Elif Shafak
‘Gorgeous’ Tommy Orange
‘Radiant’ Lauren Groff
‘Stunning’ John Green
‘Miraculous’ The New York Times
‘Sensational’ Daily Mail
‘Kaleidoscopic’ The Guardian

Cyrus Shams has always been lost. He’s grown up tangled in the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter, and his mother, whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober and maybe in love, he’s headed for an encounter that will transform everything he thought he knew. Can a final revelation change the truth of Cyrus’s life?

Electrifying, funny, and all-consuming, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a masterpiece.

_{* Martyr! was an instant New York Times bestseller w/c 27/1/24}

‘Courageous and bracing, learned and ethical, rigorous and mind-expanding’ NAOMI KLEIN
‘Mishra has made a powerful contribution to the moral history of the world’ ANDREW O’HAGAN
‘Urgent’ HISHAM MATAR
‘Brilliant’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Memory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe’s civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel’s policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world – the ‘darker peoples’, in W. E. B. Du Bois’s words – the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation – freedom from the white man’s world.

The World After Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority’s frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world’s balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population.

As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis – about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future.

From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy.

In this powerful new history of the era, acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades Simon Mayall focuses on some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history: the taking and retaking of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the ‘high-water mark’ of Ottoman advance into Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe and the modern Middle East.

The House of War offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military, who determined their conclusions and their consequences.