Dreams and Shadows
by Robin Wright
Penguin, HK$138
News about the Middle East these days is mostly disheartening. However, Robin Wright's book - the title of which borrows from Turkey's Kemal Ataturk's declaration, 'Away with dreams and shadows' - affords scope for optimism. Maintaining a reporter's distance (she has written about the Middle East for 30 years for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The New Yorker), she profiles interesting individuals whom she believes will help shape a brighter future for the region. There is Ghada Shahbender, the Egyptian 'soccer mum', who, incensed by police brutality, began the group We're Watching You to monitor elections; Hadi Khamenei, who despite being the brother of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is fighting absolute religious rule in Iran; Asma-Maria Andraos, a Christian businesswoman who, after the assassination of Lebanon's Rafik Hariri, helped stage so formidable a display of people power it forced the government to resign and Syria to withdraw its forces from the country. Wright sets out to look at 'disparate experiments with empowerment in the world's most troubled region' and adopts a hopeful, not Pollyannaish, outlook.