Description

By (author) Robert Fisk; By (author) Fisk Robert

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Robert Fisk’s bestselling eyewitness account of the events that have shaped the Middle East is alive with vivid reporting and incisive historical analysis.

The history of the Middle East is an epic story of tragedy, betrayal and world-shaking events. It is a story that Robert Fisk has been reporting for over thirty years. His masterful narrative spans the most volatile regions of the Middle East, chronicling with both rage and compassion the death by deceit of tens of thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Robert Fisk’s remarkable history is also the tale of a journalist at war – learning of the 9/11 attacks while aboard a passenger jet, reporting from a bombed-out Baghdad, interviewing Osama bin Laden – and of the courage and frustration of a life spent writing the first draft of history.

Review quote

‘For sheer bravery, dazzling prose, three interviews with Osama bin Laden and an unrivalled collection of awards won over three decades, there is nobody to match Robert Fisk. This book is his testament.’ Sunday Times

‘Brilliant…powerfully written.’ Independent on Sunday

‘A remarkable book.’ New Statesman

‘Fisk writes with a marvellous resource of image and language. His investigative reporting is lethally painstaking.’ Neal Ascherson, Independent

‘His forte is straight reporting, such as his three interviews with Osama bin Laden. At least as good are his meetings with Saddam Hussein, Khomeini and Sadeq Khalkhali, the hanging judge of the Iranian revolution, and his close-ups of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the launch of Saddam”s war against Iran, an ambush by Islamists of an Algerian police patrol, and a lift into trouble in an Apache attack helicopter on the Iraq/Turkey border.’ Guardian

‘A mammoth and magisterial work, the definitive summation of what has gone wrong in the West’s foreign policies towards Arabia.’ Scottish Sunday Herald

‘A stimulating and absorbing book, by a man who speaks Arabic, who has known the region better than most, and has met the leading players, from bin Laden to Ahmad Chalabi. A formidable production.’ New York Times

‘Full of furious, vivid and highly personalised writing…An important book by an intrepid and talented writer.’ Literary Review

‘Vivid, graphic, intense and very personal…this is a book of unquestionable importance.’ Washington Post

Biographical note

Robert Fisk is a bestselling author and journalist based in Beirut as Middle East correspondent of the ‘Independent’. He has lived in the Middle East for three decades and holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. He is also the author of ‘Pity the Nation’, a history of the Lebanese war, and ‘The Age of the Warrior’, an anthology of his ‘Comment’ pieces from the ‘Independent’.

Feature

• A major book of reportage from one of the finest journalists at work today, exploring one of the world’s most burning issues: the situation in the Middle East, and its ramifications for the West.

• ‘The Great War for Civilisation’ has sold over 40,000 copies in hardback in the UK and Ireland alone.

• Robert Fisk will be in the UK on paperback publication.

• Fisk has a huge following amongst British newspaper readers, and a reputation for venturing where few other journalists dare to go. He stayed in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war and, more recently, regularly ventured into the streets of Iraq to file stories from the grou