revolution
A century of western meddling in Iran
British involvement with the Pahlavis from the 1920s and postwar US policy were contributory factors to the revolution and the worsening of relations since
News from a small island: Theft, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, reviewed
Decades of change follow the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar, with boutique hotels multiplying in Stone Town’s haunted streets. But is a whole way of life being threatened?
A complicated bond
When I think of Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, I picture a pot boiling on a hob, the water level rising…
An empire crumbles
Welcome to Mingheria, ‘pearl of the Levant’. On a spring day, as the 20th century dawns, you disembark at this…
Desperate fools
Almost half of the terrorists hadn’t even turned up. Still, on the night of 23 February 1820, 25 men, including…
Tehran is repeating the Shah’s mistakes
The Iranian province of Khuzestan is oil-rich but water-poor. At the best of times, the southwestern region is a problem…
Only revolution will do
After the death of George Floyd last year, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests around the world, racism is…
From slave to freedom fighter
Toussaint Louverture’s ‘crazy dream’ for Haiti has still to be realised, says Amy Wilentz
The neoliberal counter-revolution
America is not in the middle of a revolution — it is a reactionary putsch. About four years ago, the…
You say you want a revolution?
In the early hours of May 30, after a night of violent protests in New York, two lawyers were arrested by the…
Nostalgia for old Ceylon: lush foliage and tender feelings from Romesh Gunesekera
Empires are born to die; that’s one source of their strange allure. An untenable form of society judders, in technicolor…
Small but deadly: postcards that fuelled the Russian Revolution
In this handsomely illustrated book Tobie Mathew makes a case for the lowly postcard’s role in the politicisation of pre-revolutionary…
The cruel end of Emmanuel Barthélemy –as a waxwork in the Chamber of Horrors
This is a biography that begins with a bang, swiftly followed by puddles of blood, shrieks of ‘Murder!’ and a…
Sixty years on
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
A country in crisis
Jack Shenker is a throwback to an older, more romantic age when foreign correspondents were angry, partisan and half-crazed with…
Fear of freedom
There are hundreds of resounding ideas and shrewd precepts in Adam Zamoyski’s temperate yet splendidly provocative Phantom Terror. This is…
From Russia with love
Nadezhda Alexandrovna Lokhvitskaya was a literary celebrity in pre-revolutionary St Petersburg. She chose the pen-name ‘Teffi’ because it was androgynous,…
The incredible journey
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
Myths of the modern-day pharoahs
Jonathan Rugman is foreign affairs correspondent for Channel 4 News.
A miniature civil war
Events in one Syrian town cast light on the nation’s strife
