Gamal Abdel-Nasser (1918-1970) was the father of modern, independent Egypt and an icon of Arab nationalism. Son of a post-office clerk, he studied law before joining the army. A regular protestor against British colonial rule, he was a key figure in the Free Officers revolutionary organization, which in 1952 staged a successful and largely bloodless coup against British rule. Nasser took control of the new regime two years later, declaring Egypt a socialist republic in 1956 and so placing himself on a collision course with the West. He emerged strengthened from the debacle of the Suez Crisis and always promoted himself as a defender of Arab interests. He oversaw extensive modernisation projects in Egypt, including the building of the Aswan dam, and pursued significant land and social reforms. His funeral, after his sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 52 provoked an overwhelming display of grief from ordinary Egyptians.

Nasser (Life & Times)

Biographies & Memoirs

Anne Alexander

Historical

Haus Publishing Limited

Each year of their 30-year marriage, Louis Begley, the award-winning author of "Wartime Lies", and his wife, the historian and writer Anka Muhlstein have spent long, enjoyable months in Venice. They write and live there and over the decades La Serenissima has become their second home. The owners of their favourite restaurants have become their friends and they share the lives of the locals, far off the beaten tourist track. Begley tells the story of how he fell in love with and in Venice, though as he makes clear when writing on Venice's pivotal role in world literature, he was not the only one - Henry James, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann are only three of his most illustrious predecessors. Muhlstein and Begley's Venice is a private view of a place which will forever inspire love and passion.

Venice

Travel

Louis Begley, Anka Muhlstein

Europe

<p>Part travel book, part musings on life from the deck of a yacht, this is Larssons homage to Celtic lands and waters, from the westernmost point of Spain (Finisterre) to the north of Scotland (Cape Wrath). Translated from the Swedish by Tom Geddes.</p>

Cape Wrath

Björn Larsson

Pictures from the Surface of the Earth

Globetrotting filmmaker Wim Wenders always takes his old panorama camera with him, using it whenever the sheer wealth of what he sees and the impression it leaves on him breaks the normal scale of things. Infinite landscapes, endless horizons, deserts, and mountain ranges overwhelm by their emptiness and silence, street fronts in Havana, Houston, Berlin, or Jerusalem offer deep insights into the shallows of civilization. Wenders’ photographs are pictures of a world almost devoid of humans, a natural or man-made world viewed from a distance. They shed light on the many guises the surface of the earth dons and attest to Wenders’ contemplative and amazed gaze. This gaze, of course, didn’t stop at September 11 and delivered haunting photos of Ground Zero taken shortly after the attack. With poetic comments by the artist on all the pictures, the book is both a portrait of the world as encountered by the photographer and a portrait of the photographer as reflected in his vision of the world.

Arts & Photography

Wim, Wenders

Individual Artists

Naguib Mahfouz: Egypt's Nobel Laureate (Life & Times)

Enany, Rasheed El

Arts & Literature

Farewell To Salonica

Leon Sciaky

<p>Originally published in German as "Einlass ins reich des donnerdrachens" Wien, Picus, 2006.</p>

Hidden Bhutan: Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon (Armchair Traveller)

Uitz, Martin & Nathaniel McBride

Asia

Virginia Woolf was clearly one of the great writers of the past century, but in what does her greatness  consists? muses Anthony Curtis. This book is an attempt to answer that question. It also places the author of "A Room of One's Own" firmly on a par with writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and therefore within the study remit of courses on feminist literature. This title is richly illustrated with photographs of the private sphere of the Bloomsbury Group and public places of the London of Woolf's time.

Virginia Woolf

Anthony Curtis

Venice for Lovers is a memorable collaboration by two fine stylists who have fashioned their own personal homages to Venice, one with a novella, the other with a personal essay. Every year for all the thirty they have been married, Begley and Muhlstein have escaped to Venice to write. In her contribution to the book, Muhlstein charmingly describes how she and her husband dine at the same restaurant every night for years on end, and how becoming friends with restaurateurs has been an unsurpassed means of getting to know the city and its inhabitants, far from the tourists in San Marco Square. In his short novella, Begley writes a story of falling in love withand inVenice. His twenty-year-old protagonist, enamored with an older, far worldlier woman of twenty-seven, is lured by her to the City of Water, only to be unceremoniously dumped and left to fend for himself after a brief rendezvous. But he discovers a lasting love for Venice itselfnot an uncommon romance, as Begley’s brilliant literary essay on the city’s place within world literature demonstrates: Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann were all illustrious predecessors.

Venice for Lovers

begley-louis-muhlstein-anka

Why This World

Benjamin Moser

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Books by Haus Publishing Limited