Description
Book SynopsisThis book ventures into the world beyond Lampedusa: the crisis belt that stretches from Kashmir across Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Arab world and beyond, to the borders and coasts of Europe. Celebrated author Navid Kermani reports from a region which is our immediate neighbour, despite all too often being depicted as remote and distant from our daily concerns. Kermani has visited the places where no CNN transmitter truck is parked and yet smouldering fires threaten world peace. In his widely praised, wonderfully agile and careful prose, he reports on NATO's war in Afghanistan and the underside of globalization in India, on the civil war in Syria and the struggle of Shiites and Kurds against the 'Islamic State' in Iraq. He was the only Western reporter present at the suppression of the mass protests in Tehran, travelled with Sufis through Pakistan, talked with Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, and observed the disastrous Mediterranean refugee route in Lampedusa.
Kermani's gripping reports allow us to understand a world in turmoil, to share the suspense and the suffering of the people in it. As if by magic, he brings individual lives and situations to life so vividly that complex and seemingly distant problems of world politics suddenly appear crystal clear. Our world too lies beyond Lampedusa.
Trade Review"Those who want to see the day-to-day lives of human beings in the crisis regions of the Middle East - lives that don't make the news - should read Navid Kermani's sensitive reporting. Reports you won't soon forget."
—Deutschland-Radio
"Kermani's well-researched and sensitive book reveals how violence is born. It also reminds us that far away victims and perpetrators have one thing in common: they're human beings, just like us."
—Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Intense, colourful, emotional, subjective."
—Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
"Among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in Germany today."
—The New York Review of Books
"After reading this book, one puts it down glad to have been both touched and taught"
—Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag
"Kermani's style is nuanced and kindly, poetic and philosophical, he zooms in and out of perspectives like a novelist and is drawn to irresolvable tensions like a conceptual artist... State of Emergency is a humane and timely reminder that there is no one Islam, no one set of Islamic views, values and beliefs, just as there is no one Western creed."
—Geographical
Table of ContentsEditorial Note
Cairo, December 2006
Paradise in a State of Emergency
Kashmir, October 2007
Houseboat 1
In the City
Houseboat 2
Politicians 1-4
Night
Houseboat 3
The Shrine
Houseboat 4
In the Countryside
Houseboat 5
The Mother
Houseboat 6
Ahad Baba
In Kashmir, Far Away from Kashmir
Landless
Between Agra and Delhi, September 2007
Lumpenproletariat in Formation
Why Complain?
They Want Land
Expulsion as Industrial Development Policy
The Sky and the Ground
Ram Paydiri Doesn’t Understand
The Laboratory
Gujarat, October 2007
An Idol
On the Rubbish Tip
Into the Centre
Social Praxis
India’s Future
Where Even the Atheists Pray
The Pit
A Visit to the Sufis
Pakistan, February 2012
Rhythm of God
War Against Themselves
The Lovers' Tomb
O Papa, Protect Me
In the Mansion District
The Poor People's Peace
Quiet, Cleanliness and Order
The Feast
The Cosmic Order
Bleak Normality
Afghanistan I, December 2006
People Don’t Change Much
Really Crazy
Two British Commanders
Humanitarian Mission
In Kabul
Where Is the Progress?
Master Tamim
The New Motorway
American Headquarters
Visit to the Passport Office
Cola in the Dark
The Limits of Reporting
Afghanistan II, September 11, 2011
Cemetery 1
Walls in Front of Walls
Northward
Mazar-e Sharif
The Best Place in Town
In the Countryside
In the Panjshir Valley
In the South
Peace Conference
Tribal Leaders 1
Kandahar
Tribal Leaders 2
The Limits of Reporting
Cemetery 2
The Uprising
Tehran, June 2009
Chance Companions
Arrival
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Back to Saturday
Sunday
Early Monday
When You See the Black Flags
Iraq, September 2014
I. Najaf: In the Heart of the Shia
Ubiquity of Death
A Dangerous Topic
A Different Shia
With Swordlike Index Finger
Grand Ayatollah Sistani's Message
II. Baghdad: The Future Is Past
A Thirty Years' War and More
A Hookah with Goethe and Hölderlin
Fog of Melancholy
Right Out of Ali Baba
The Last Christian
A Warrior
III. Kurdistan: The War for Our World Too
Literally Overnight
What For?
To the Front
The General
The Entrance to Hell
Syria, September 2012
The Centre and the Margins
Artists of the Revolution
Two Views
Outsourcing Terror
The Feast of St Elian
At the Tomb of Ibn Arabi
Thinking without Gradations
The Intensive Care Unit
Those Who Can Read, Let Them Read
We Too Love Life
Palestine, April 2005
In Search of Palestine
Without Hope
The Wall Against Empathy
My Capitulation
They Are Human Beings
Life as What It Is
Lampedusa, September 2008
Sunday Outing
Ghosts
Midnight
The Previous Mayor
The Camp
The New Mayor
Night Again
With or Without Approval
Cairo, October 2012
