Riassunto:
The seeds of conflict throughout the Middle East were sown in the first 60 years of the 20th century. It was then that the Western powers - Britain, France and the USA - discovered the imperatives for intervention that have plunged the region into crisis ever since. It was then, too, that most of the region's modern-day states were created and their regimes forged; and then that their management by the West earned abiding resentment. "Sowing the Wind" tells of how and why this happened. The subject is painful and essentially sombre, but John Keay illuminates it with lucid analysis and anecdotes. This is that rarest of works, a history with humour, an epic with attitude, a dirge that delights. Here are unearthed a host of unregarded precedents, from the Gulf's first "gusher" to the first aerial assault on Baghdad, the first of Syria's innumerable coups, and the first terrorist outrages and suicide bombers. Pre-Balfour to post-Suez, the familiar landmarks loom afresh from the obscure antics of lobbyists and the agonizings of administrations. Little known figures - junior officers, contractors, explorers, spies - contest the orthodoxies of Arabist giants like T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Glubb Pasha and Loy Henderson. The generals - Townshend and Allenby, Gouraud and Catroux, Wavell and Spears, Eisenhower and Patten - mingle memorably with maverick travellers and femmes both "fatales" and "formidables". Four Roosevelts juggle with the fate of nations. Authors as alien as E.M. Forster and Arthur Koestler add their testimony. And in Antonius and Weizmann, the Mufti and Begin, Arab is inexorably juxtaposed with Jew. Pertinent, scholarly and irreverent, "Sowing the Wind" provides an ambitious insight into the making of the world's most fraught arena.
Recensione:
A witty, thoroughly informed and agreeably detached account of a subject both serious and extremely interesting ... John Keay's sweeping, breathless but always entertaining and acute study of the West's various interventions in the region is going to be a great help, and it quietly justifies its title by quietly suggesting that the net result of these interventions in the course of the 20th Century was less than productive (Spectator, Peter Hensher)
Using a wealth of finely selected memoirs and anecdotes, to a remarkable degree John Keay pulls off the impossible. While always alert to the seriousness of his subject matter, he nonetheless manages to evoke countless individuals, some well known (T E Lawrence, General Allenby), some only half-remembered (Gertrude Bell, Glubb Pasha), and some the preserve of specialists (A T Wilson, Loy Henderson). Albert Einstein and E M Forster are among many who put in guest appearances. Keay repeatedly joining up yesterday's dots with missing sand lines (Sunday Times)
John Keay's new history of the British in the modern Middle East is the best for almost 40 years (Guardian)
Keay's book is exemplary in its commitment to telling the story of Western - during this period, primarily British - intervention in the Middle East (John McTernan, Scotland on Sunday)
An impressive account ... an excellent synthesis of the vast body of work on how the west planted the seeds of the Middle East's conflicts. Keay excels at explaining the broader political context of events (New Statesman)
John Keay has created a brilliant narrative that mixes sound historical judgement with an ability to see through self-serving cant and has assembled an extraordinary cast of characters (Glasgow Sunday Herald)
Grand in scope and notable in achievement ... with erudition and wit, Keay provides as impartial an introduction to the complex Arab-Israeli relationship as possible (LA Times)
Offers an insight both enthralling and scholarly (Traveller Magazine)
Keay has a light touch and a gift for weaving together the complex strands of the story in a compelling ... way (Royal Society for Asian Affairs)
Keay's fluid prose breathes life into this subject (The Glasgow Herald)
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