This history of modern Iran is not a survey in the conventional sense but an ambitious exploration of the story of a nation. It offers a revealing look at how events, people, and institutions are shaped by currents that sometimes reach back hundreds...

For sale in CIS only! It has become common in the Western media to reduce the Middle East and its cultures to news and images of violence. A region at the centre of the world's civilisations is in danger of becoming culturally tarnished beyond recog...

For sale in CIS only! Iran has emerged from decades of isolation and struggle to become a leading, if not the pre-eminent, regional power. Iran projects its influence throughout the Middle East and parts of Central Asia. Moreover, Iranian diplomacy...

For sale in CIS only! King Salman of Saudi Arabia began his rule in 2015 confronted with a series of unprecedented challenges. The dilemmas he has faced are new and significant, from leadership shuffles and falling oil prices to regional and interna...

For sale in CIS only! Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a leftist dissident who spent sixteen years as a political prisoner and now lives in exile. He describes with precision and fervour the events that led to Syria's 2011 uprising, the metamorphosis of the p...

For sale in CIS only! The Saudi royal family has survived the events of the Arab Spring intact and unscathed. Any major upheavals were ostensibly averted with the help of oil revenues, while the Kingdom's influential clerics conveniently declared al...

For sale in CIS only! Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at LSE and Research Fellow at the Open Society Foundation. She was Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King's College, London between 1994 and 2013. Previou...

In autumn 2001, U.S. and NATO troops were deployed to Afghanistan to unseat the Taliban rulers, repressive Islamic fundamentalists who had lent active support to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda jihadists. The NATO forces defeated and dismantled the Taliba...

Since the withdrawal of US occupying forces, international attention has shifted away from Iraq – but life for Iraqis has become no easier. Deadly bombings are still all too common, sectarian violence has soared and all-pervading corruption means tha...

For sale in CIS only! Ironic and humorous, witty and self-deprecatory, "The Afghan Rumour Bazaar" reveals the quotidian absurdities of lives framed against the backdrop of a savage war. Offering daringly new perspectives on a country readers may err...