My Great Arab Melancholy

**Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography**

'A stunningly stylish, breathtakingly evocative tribute in words and art to the cosmopolitan Levant that exists in defiance of war and empire. I treasure my copy' - Molly Crabapple, artist

A beautiful, tragic, and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziadé. Blending the author's years of research, personal memoir, and more than 300 illustrations, this compelling history of the modern Arab world explores the major thinkers, struggles, and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today.

Ziadé begins in South Lebanon, 'land of martyrs, ruins and passion', before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo, and Baghdad. The book moves from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, tracing the Arab world's tragedies and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism and the conquest of Palestine.

Within these pages, there are the blasts of explosions, blood, tears and tragedy, cemeteries, wreaths and ribbons, martyrs, and paradise. Ziadé unearths the buried memory of resistance fighters and their lost ideals. She celebrates the progressive, bold, revolutionary moments and figures of the Arab world's recent past.