Damascus
Damascus

Author: Rafik Schami

Publisher: Haus Pub.

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 9781906598839

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Damascus was Rafik Schami’s home for 25 years before he went into exile, and he neverforgot it. This ‘Pearl of the Orient’ is still the city he loves more than any other. Thirtyyears later, and now a prize-winning novelist, Schami leapt at the chance to write a culinary-cultural book on his former home town. There were, however, two seemingly insurmountablebarriers - time and geography. So Schami’s sister Marie wandered throughDamascus for a year on his behalf, relaying curiosities, sounds, personalities, tastes andthe smells of the Old City, while Schami wrote them down, relishing the diverse mark lefton Damascene cuisine by its multifarious history. Rafik Schami is the acclaimed authorof The Dark Side of Love.

City
City

Author: P.D. Smith

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2012-06-19

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1608197069

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For the first time in the history of the planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - are now living in cities. Two hundred years ago only 3 per cent of the world's population were urbanites, a figure that had remained fairly stable (give or take the occasional plague) for about 1000 years. By 2030, 60 per cent of us will be urban dwellers. City is the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city and contains main sections on 'History', 'Customs and Language', 'Districts', 'Transport', 'Money', 'Work', 'Tourist Sites', 'Shops and markets', 'Nightlife', etc., and mini-essays on anything and everything from Babel, Tenochtitlán and Ellis Island to Beijing, Mumbai and New York, and from boulevards, suburbs, shanty towns and favelas, to skylines, urban legends and the sacred. Drawing on a wide range of examples from cities across the world and throughout history, it explores the reasons why people first built cities and why urban populations are growing larger every year. City is illustrated throughout with a range of photographs, maps and other illustrations.

A New Old Damascus
A New Old Damascus

Author: Christa Salamandra

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2004-12-10

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780253110411

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"[F]illed with rare encounters with Syria's oldest, most elite families. Critics of anthropology's taste for exoticism and marginality will savor this study of upper-class Damascus, a world that is urbane and cosmopolitan, yet in many ways as remote as the settings in which the best ethnography has traditionally been done.... [Written] with a nuanced appreciation of the cultural forms in question and how Damascenes themselves think, talk about, and create them." -- Andrew Shryock In contemporary urban Syria, debates about the representation, preservation, and restoration of the Old City of Damascus have become part of status competition and identity construction among the city's elite. In theme restaurants and nightclubs that play on images of Syrian tradition, in television programs, nostalgic literature, and visual art, and in the rhetoric of historic preservation groups, the idea of the Old City has become a commodity for the consumption of tourists and, most important, of new and old segments of the Syrian upper class. In this lively ethnographic study, Christa Salamandra argues that in deploying and debating such representations, Syrians dispute the past and criticize the present. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies -- Mark Tessler, general editor

Spoonfuls of Germany
Spoonfuls of Germany

Author: Nadia Hassani

Publisher: Hippocrene Books

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780781810579

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This book goes beyond the sauerkraut and knackwurst stereotype to unveil the often overlooked diversity of German cuisine. 170 regional recipes range from classic dishes, such as spaetzle with cheese and sauerbraten to forgotten delicacies like Westfalian pumpernickel pudding. Numerous profiles, anecdotes, and food lore complete the book.

Syria
Syria

Author: Diana Darke

Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1841623148

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Travel and holiday.

Power, Sect and State in Syria
Power, Sect and State in Syria

Author: A. Maria A. Kastrinou

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-03-31

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0857729551

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The Syrian state's rhetoric of Arab nationalism left little room for the official recognition of minority identities in pre-war Syria. Yet in practice, the state continually engaged with the Druze and other minorities to reinforce its legitimacy, often through cultural policy. Uncovering this neglected aspect of pre-war Syrian politics, Kastrinou explores the cultural politics of marriage in Syria, primarily among the Druze, to reveal how practical rituals of marriage inform sectarian and national identity formation.Challenging the assumed inherence of sectarianism and Druze endogamy, the book provides an historical and ethnographic account of political power and its relation to social control in Syria. It demonstrates the centrality of the body to Druze cosmology and how ritual performances of birth, marriage and death maintain and negotiate sectarian cohesion. Connecting these struggles to national and international politics, Kastrinou examines how both the Syrian government and the European Union have sponsored marriage-themed dance performances in Syria, each leveraging its cultural importance to legitimise their own policy goals. The book establishes marriage as a pervasive idiom for the construction of collective identity in Syria, which is appropriated by individuals, sects, states and intergovernmental organizations alike. Its conclusions are relevant to scholars of Middle East studies, sectarianism, anthropology and politics.

Dark Side of Love
Dark Side of Love

Author: Rafik Schami

Publisher: Haus Publishing

Published: 2010-10-15

Total Pages: 952

ISBN-13: 1906697329

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A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man’s mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer’s motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures. Rafik Schami dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.