Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia - Couverture souple

Lacey, Robert

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0143118277 ISBN 13 : 9780143118275

Editeur : Penguin Books, 2010

Synopsis

Book by Lacey Robert

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture :

"Robert Lacey explains one of the world's most complicated governments and societies with sweeping, beautiful writing, intellectual brilliance and unparalleled insight. Inside the Kingdom is the most penetrating and substantial book on the Saudi state and society since September 11. Once again Lacey has proved that no outsider understands Saudi Arabia better than himself. This is a thoughtful masterpiece about a country that lies at the heart of the Muslim world."

-Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos

"Robert Lacey has returned to the Kingdom to provide an insightful and intimate portrait of a country - and a family - chained to tradition and challenged by the remorseless march of modernity. Lacey provides many startling and often delicious details that make this history fresh, surprising, and essential."

-- Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer-winning author of 'The Looming Tower"

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox - the world's largest producer of oil which also produced fifteen of the nineteen hijackers of 9/11. While its fabulously wealthy princes and businessmen raise futuristic cities in the desert, its fundamentalist clerics despise western modernity and seek to roll back the kingdom's values fourteen hundred years to the time of the Prophet Mohammed. To fully understand our interdependent 21st century world, we have to understand Saudi Arabia.

Best-selling author Robert Lacey has known the Kingdom for thirty years. He first went to live there in 1979 to research the inside story of the oil boom, producing his epic and revelatory book The Kingdom which was banned by the Saudi government. After 9/11 he returned, to discover the dramatic components of a story stranger than fiction:

* The bloody seizure of Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's Holy of Holies, by a group of fanatics under the wing of the Saudi religious establishment itself

* How Osama Bin Laden and his Arab fighters in Afghanistan were fostered by both the US and Saudi governments, to inspire a whole generation of Muslim youth with the ideal of the jihadi - the Islamic holy warrior

* The proof to refute the conspiracy theorists: how Al-Qaeda was waiting to celebrate before the planes hit the Towers on 9/11

* The tragedy of the "Qateef Girl" - raped by six men, then sentenced to be lashed for her own "immoral" behaviour

* How Saudi Arabia seeks to re-educate its graduates from the Guantanamo prison camp - with a job, a car, and a wife

Lacey is a born storyteller and he recounts these dramatic and controversial incidents in the voices of the Saudis themselves, painting a picture of a society that is slowly learning how not to be at war with itself. Saudi Arabia is notorious for its role in the greatest tragedy of modern times. Now it is struggling to realign itself around the concepts that it once scorned: religious tolerance, human rights, political accountablity - though not yet democracy - and, most challenging of all, equal rights for women. If the Kingdom can succeed in its latest and greatest battle, the consequences will be profound for its own society, for the troubled Middle East, for the countries that struggle with these crucial issues all over the globe - and, not least, for America.

Quatrième de couverture :

'Compelling ... [I] know of no book that captures so convincingly the intimate connection between the kingdom and the rise of al-Qaeda and its jihadist ideology' Economist

Saudi Arabia plays a crucial role in our interdependent 21st-century world. It is a country of fabulous wealth - the world's largest oil producer - whose princes and businessmen raise futuristic cities in the desert. Yet it is also notorious for producing fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 suicide bombers and fostering fundamentalist clerics who want to turn the clock back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

Bestselling author Robert Lacey has known the kingdom well for thirty years. Here, he depicts the nation, post 9/11, struggling to re-align itself around the concepts it once scorned: religious tolerance, human rights, political accountability - though not yet democracy - and, most challenging of all, equal rights for women. If the kingdom can succeed in this battle, the consequences will be profound - for its own society and for the troubled Middle East.

'A book of startling insights ... Lacey's sympathetic engagement with the struggles, triumphs and defeats of average Saudi men and women makes Inside the Kingdom both compelling reading and an important contribution to building greater understanding between Saudi Arabia and the west' Financial Times

'Beautifully written and thought-provoking ... A highly accomplished book which should go into the bags of anyone who has to travel to the Kingdom' Literary Review

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0143118277
• ISBN 13: 9780143118275
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 448