Nine Quarters of Jerusalem
A New Biography of the Old City
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- USD 7.99
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- USD 7.99
Descripción editorial
'Original and illuminating ... what a good book this is' Jonathan Dimbleby
'A love letter to the people of the Old City' Jerusalem Post
In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. Maps divide the walled Old City into four quarters, yet that division doesn't reflect the reality of mixed and diverse neighbourhoods. Beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, much of the Old City remains little known to visitors, its people overlooked and their stories untold. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem lets the communities of the Old City speak for themselves. Ranging through ancient past and political present, it evokes the city's depth and cultural diversity.
Matthew Teller's highly original 'biography' features the Old City's Palestinian and Jewish communities, but also spotlights its Indian and African populations, its Greek and Armenian and Syriac cultures, its downtrodden Dom Gypsy families and its Sufi mystics. It discusses the sources of Jerusalem's holiness and the ideas - often startlingly secular - that have shaped lives within its walls. Nine Quarters of Jerusalem is an evocation of place through story, led by the voices of Jerusalemites.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British journalist Teller (Quite Alone) comes up short in his effort "to address the imbalance in stories—or narratives, or ideas—that exist about Jerusalem." Contending that "Palestinian lives and voices have been too often excluded," Teller explores the cultural diversity of Jerusalem with an emphasis on the stories of the "unlistened-to." He details the prosaic lives of Palestinian individuals and flavors their stories with colorful details, such as when he chronicles the history of the "most famous" hummus shop in the city and describes the founder's process of mashing chickpeas by hand. The author probes cultural frictions and biases, relating the story of a Dom woman who, after enduring a childhood marked by discrimination, founded a nonprofit to provide social services to the Dom community, descendants of the itinerant Domba people of India who settled around the Middle East. Discussions of Jerusalem's history and geography, as well as the arbitrary imperial division of the city into four quarters, are competent but unlikely to surprise those familiar with the basic outline of the city's past. Additionally, incomplete accounts of the 1948 war and the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, as well as baroque phrasing (the partition of British Palestine in 1947 is labeled "that geriatric tantrum from the 1930s rebranded as the two-state solution") drag this down. Readers interested in a more nuanced look at Jerusalem will be better served by Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem.
