Book of Month: July 2001

A Voice of Reason: Hanan Ashrawi and Peace in the Middle East

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Publisher: Multiple
Year: 1994

From Library Review This is a valuable addition to the small but growing canon of books in English providing multidimensional accounts of Palestinian history; no longer are we limited to one-sided works featuring Yasir Arafat as the token representative of the Palestinian people. This book presents a balanced portrait of the complex, highly intelligent, controversial Christian Arab woman who emerged as the media-savvy PLO spokesperson at the first Middle East peace talks in 1991 and remained highly visible to the signing of the Palestinian-Israeli peace accord on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993. As spokesperson, Ashrawi was responsible for changing the PLO's image from terrorism to diplomacy. Victor, a novelist and journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East, spent 15 months interviewing Ashrawi and her family, friends, and adversaries (both Palestinian and Israeli). The resulting book reads more like a novel than a journalistic report. Victor is particularly adept at the descripiton of place and people and has done a skillful task of making a coherent whole from the sum of many fragmented interviews.

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