Black Wave

''Blistering'' Sunday Times
''Indispensable'' Observer
''Fascinating'' The Times
''Brilliant'' Peter Frankopan
''Revelatory'' Lindsey Hilsum

A timely and unprecedented examination of how the modern Middle East unravelled, and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979. Shortlisted for the Cundhill History Prize 2020

''What happened to us?''

For decades, the question has haunted the Arab and Muslim world, heard across Iran and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in the author''s home country of Lebanon. Was it always so? When did the extremism, intolerance and bloodletting of today displace the region''s cultural promise and diversity?

In Black Wave, award-winning journalist and author Kim Ghattas argues that the turning point in the modern history of the Middle East can be located in the toxic confluence of three major events in 1979: the Iranian revolution; the siege of the Ho