Books about Orientalist from Amazon.com

Turning away from the privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell (1868—1926) explored, mapped, and excavated the world of the Arabs. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire.
 
In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievements–a woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds wit the confined and custom-bound England she left behind. Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure..
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A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s story across ten countries and found himself caught up in encounters as dramatic and surreal–and sometimes as heartbreaking–as his subject’s life.

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Freya Stark—traveler, explorer, Arabist, and woman of letters—began the extraordinary adventures that would glamorize her—and would catapult her into public life for the next sixty years—in 1927. And with the publication of The Valley of the Assassins in 1934, her legend was launched

Leaving behind a miserable family life, Freya set out, at the age of thirty-four, to explore remote and dangerous regions of the Middle East. She was captured in 1927 by the French military police after penetrating their cordon around the rebellious Druze. She explored the mountainous territory of the mysterious Assassins of Persia, became the first woman to explore Luristan in western Iran, and followed ancient frankincense routes to locate a lost city. Admired by British officialdom, her knowledge of Middle Eastern languages and culture aided the military and diplomatic corps, for whom she conceived an effective propaganda network during WWII.

But Stark’s indomitable spirit was forged by contradictions, her high-profile wanderings often masking deep insecurities. A child of privilege, she grew up in near poverty; she longed for love, but consistently focused on the wrong men. This is a brilliant and balanced biography—filled with sheikhs, diplomats, nomad warriors and chieftains, generals, would be lovers, and luminaries. Author Jane Geniesse digs beneath the mythology to uncover a complex, quixotic, and controversial woman.

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From the Great Pyramids to the Taj Mahal, the Middle East and India have for centuries lured Westerners to travel and have inspired their architecture, literature, music and fashion The Orientalists pursues the richest era of this fascination, the mid to late 19th century, when American and European artists traveled and painted throughout the Holy Land and India. The highly cinematic images they created suggest a great influence on modern visual culture. Travel, art, geography, cultural perception, and social and military history are all woven through the text. An extensive introduction provides a thought-provoking perspective on the evolution of Orientalism and the rise of Islam and its ever-changing relationship to the West. It is within this context that the author introduces us to Orientalist paintings. The author is well aware of September 11, 2001 and its implications on the book which was being researched and formulated in his mind before the horrific events unfolded. He does not pretend.
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In this highly acclaimed and original work of social and cultural history, the author of the bestselling Balkan Ghosts relates the never-before-told story of the expatriate elite that shaped American policy in the Middle East for more than a century. 39 photos..
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At the end of the 19th century numerous painters succumbed to the charms of the Orient. Travel to distant lands was easier, and artists brought back voluptuous images filled with sun and colour. The noted specialist Lynne Thornton has studied almost 150 painters, from Delacroix to Ziem. Her fine book The Orientalists, Painter-Travellers features numerous lesser known masters and is an essential reference work for collectors. It is also a marvellous invitation to travel..
Price: $23.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1899, an Englishman named Martin Pearce stumbles out of the desert into an East African coastal town and is rescued by Hassanali, a shopkeeper whose beautiful sister Rehana nurses Pearce back to health. Pearce and Rehana begin a passionate illicit love affair, which resonates fifty years later when the narrator’s brother falls madly in love with Rehana’s granddaughter. In the story of two forbidden love affairs and their effects on the lovers’ families, Abdulrazak Gurnah brilliantly dramatizes the personal and political consequences of colonialism, the vicissitudes of love, and the power of fiction..
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Of all the customs and traditions concerning the lives of oriental women, the harem is probably the most familiar and least understood in the West. Travelling artists, writers and poets let their imagination run unbridled upon this theme. To such an extent that in all the paintings from the early 18th century to the 1940s, reality and imagination are closely intermingled. Beyond the theme of odalisques and almahs, this volume reflects upon the small pleasures of daily life, family and women's work. Over one hundred-and-fifty Orientalist painters, both prestigious and less known, are brought together in this book as individual monographs..
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Robert Irwin's history of Orientalism leads from Ancient Greece to the present. He shows that, whether making philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, cataloguing the coins of Fatimid Egypt or establishing the basic chronology of Harun al-Rashid's military campaigns against Byzantium, scholars have been unified not by politics or ideology but by their shared obsession. "For Lust of Knowing" is an extraordinary, passionate book, both a sustained argument and a brilliant work of original scholarship..
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