What to Read While the Cradle of Civilization Burns

The Middle East is both the birthplace of civilization and, as the globe's largest repository of fossil fuels, the mother's milk of the modern industrialized world. At a time when war threatens to engulf the entire region and the Harper government abandons Canada's traditional "honest broker" role in favour of increasingly pro-American and pro-Israel policies, the daily barrage of news headlines often does more to obscure than enlighten.

In addition to Informed Comment, the daily blog of Professor Juan Cole -- arguably the world's leading expert on the Middle East -- the following books are recommended for both the informed observer and the recent initiate to the cataclysmic events unfolding on that fraught soil. Far from dry policy prescriptions, these compelling narratives stand apart from myriad other books in the field by relating the human story behind the headlines and focusing on fundamental issues that rarely make the news.

The Yellow Wind By David Grossman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988)

The unresolved question of Palestine is the single greatest cause of the woes plaguing the Middle East -- and, by extension, the world. Yet rarely do we glimpse the brutal realities of life under Israeli occupation. The acclaimed Israeli novelist David Grossman took a turn at telling that story in 1987 -- mere months before the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada -- and his account is no less relevant today.

Back then, it was already 20 years into the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In poetic non-fiction reportage, Grossman chronicles the occupation from the perspectives of both its victims and its perpetrators -- and those, like Grossman himself, caught in between. He meets an old Palestinian woman who reminds him of his Polish grandmother, and finds himself disturbed by Israeli settlers who take the Bible as an "operational order."

Even as his experiences transform him, he recognizes that the most formidable fortress is the mind: "Furthermore, at the end of twenty years it seems to me that all the arguments, both rational and emotional, have already been made. Only on extremely rare occasions do we hear a crushing new argument, one that requires you to re-evaluate your opinions, and in Israel the reality is that it is easier for a man to change his religion, and maybe even his sex, than to change in any decisive way his political opinions. Renounce your opinions -- and it is as if you have announced the total replacement of the structure of your soul, and have taken it upon yourself to proclaim that, up to now, you lived a perfect lie."

For the rest of us, presented with nuanced reality through the eyes of this keenly perceptive observer, it's not too late.

My Name Is Rachel Corrie Edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner (Nick Hern Books, 2006)

The writings of the young American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli Caterpillar bulldozer while trying to protect the home of a physician in Gaza from demolition (a common occurrence for Palestinians under occupation, the vast majority of whom are unarmed civilians) were made into a play that experienced the kind of censorship journalists frequently endure when they attempt to document the realities of Israel's occupation.

Though the play was "postponed" in New York, it was recently presented in Vancouver by the Neworld Theatre and Judith Marcuse Projects. It's also available as a short book. More from one of the editors here. Get it for your book club or read an excerpt from Rachel Corrie's final e-mails.

Palestine By Joe Sacco (Fantagraphics Books, 2001)

This graphic novel from the creator of Safe Area Gorazde is a pioneering work of comic-strip journalism. Joe Sacco, a young American curious about the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, spent two months living with Palestinians in the occupied territories in 1991 and 1992, poignantly depicting the torture, land confiscation, killings and small and large humiliations of their daily lives. A groundbreaking work with an introduction by Edward Said, it was originally issued as a nine-part comic series that received an American Book Award.