■ Shlaim, Avi, 2007. Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. London: Penguin. xxii + 698 pp. ISBN 9780141017280
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433090460040815 |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK NOTES 605
while all the time coloured by his good-natured
optimism. A deliberately languid pace is matched
only by the sharpness of his observations, though
a sense of foreboding begins to cast a shadow
over later chapters. These are the thoughts of
a man who views this conflict with clarity, but
whose own journey to gain such understand-
ing has taken a lengthy, complex and above all
privileged route, only to realize he sadly will not
see it resolved in his lifetime. In many respects,
Nusseibeh is a mercurial character, who by his
own admission, by virtue of his mixed lineage, is
confused about his identity, yet buoyed up by a
strong sense of attachment and love for a place,
namely East Jerusalem’s Old City. Passages that
recollect his 1950s childhood there evoke a heart-
felt nostalgia that might help explain his (and his
peers’) purposeful and lifelong journey thereafter
as adults. This is a particularly rewarding read,
then, for those interested in the minutiae of
Palestinian fractional politics and one man’s phil-
o sophical reflections upon it during a historically
important period of its development; one which
over time saw young idealists become aging revo-
lutionaries, Yasser Arafat and Sheikh Yassin being
cited as examples. Yet strangely, despite his asso-
ciations (for a time he was the PLO’s Jerusalem
representative), this is a fate that seems to have
escaped the urbane Nusseibeh, hostage perhaps
to his own balanced temperament and enduring
intellectual curiosity.
Farrid Shamsuddin
Shlaim, Avi, 2007. Lion of Jordan: The Life
of King Hussein in War and Peace. London: Pen-
guin. xxii + 698 pp. ISBN 9780141017280.
Biographies can usually say only so much about
a political situation, because in essence they
must place the person centre stage – and poli-
tics is rarely about individuals. This book is an
exception because, by and large, King Hussein
was Jordan for about 40 years. His devotion to
regional politics placed Jordan centre stage in the
Israeli–Arab conflict. As Avi Shlaim illustrates,
the stubby little king became the Lion of Jordan
who, despite the odds, pulled Jordan through the
stormy seas of Middle East diplomacy and made
it one of the leading countries in this diplomacy –
a place out of proportion with the powers vested
in the kingdom. From his ascent to the throne to
his death in 1999, Hussein worked unrelentingly
for a solution to the conflict. He made clear errors
Norton, Augustus Richard, 2007. Hezbollah:
A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. 187 pp. ISBN 9780691131245.
Hezbollah, as an organization, has a reputation
that has reached almost mythical proportions. It
is loved by many throughout much of the Arab
world, for its stance against Israel, and equally
passionately vilified by much of the western
world for the very same reason. Born in civil war,
the party of God was founded in violence, by
infamously scaring the USA out of its involve-
ment in Lebanon. Slightly less than two decades
later, the group made Israel retreat from southern
Lebanon and then a few years later defeated
Israel in the war of 2006. This same organization
runs hospitals and schools, is an active political
actor in the Lebanese parliament and has mas-
sive popular support among certain groups of the
Lebanese population. Yet, the very same group
that claims to defend Lebanon from occupation
and to fight injustice also has a brutal history of
turning its guns on its own people, most recently
in May 2008. Norton is no apologist. He makes
no attempt to explain away what Hezbollah
does, he merely explains. At times, these expla-
nations might anger those who wish to vilify the
organization; in other cases, they would anger
those who venerate it. Unlike most researchers
who analyze Hezbollah, Norton has not taken
sides. His presentation takes us from the streets
of poorer Shia towns in southern Lebanon,
through popular religious ceremonies and to the
greater politics of the Hezbollah–Iran connection.
This variation of the micro/macro levels enables
the reader to obtain a deeper level of insight into
an organization that is far too often presented in
a Manichean light. Norton has done an impres-
sive job by managing, in such a short book, to
give a down-to-earth presentation of a complex
organization.
Jørgen Jensehaugen
Nusseibeh, Sari, with Anthony David, 2007.
Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life. London:
Halban. vi + 562 pp. ISBN 9781905559053.
There is much to be gleaned from Sari Nusseibeh’s
lucid and rational memoirs, which weave a rich tap-
estry of a life lived with the backdrop of upheaval,
academia, peace processes, Intifadas and religious
fanaticism (his bête noire) – all underpinned by
the tragedy of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict,
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