When Euan and Ruth set off with their young daughter to live in Bahrain, it is meant to be an experience and adventure they will cherish. But on the night they arrive, Ruth discovers the truth behind the missionary work Euan has planned and feels her world start to crumble. Far from home, and with events spiralling towards war in nearby Iraq, she starts to question her faith – in Euan, in their marriage and in all she has held dear.

With Euan so often away, she is confined to their guarded compound with her neighbours and, in particular, Noor, a troubled teenager recently returned to Bahrain to live with her father. Confronted by temptations and doubt, each must make choices that could change all of their lives for ever. Compelling, passionate and deeply resonant, The Meeting Point is a novel about idealism and innocence, about the unexpected turns life can take and the dangers and chances that await us.

The Meeting Point

Bahrain is beautiful, for many reasons- but it is mainly beautiful, in my eyes, because it is a country that embraces. The historical and cultural metamorphosis of this island is reflected in the aggregate of identities, accents and mini-cultures. Like the pearl, Bahrain has many layers and that only further adds to its lustre. The past attests to its present and the future is silent in waiting for its becoming. (Nawf T. Al-Bassam). Bahrain's beauty is not aesthetic, it is not visual - it's beauty is much deeper, hidden, and much more personal. In this way, and to many people, Bahrain is beautiful. And, as many of the stories in this book will demonstrate, Bahrain's beauty is fundamentally the subtle, gentle beauty of the island, it's way of life and the friendliness and compassion and openness and warmth of it's people. With lots of fascinating personal 'life' stories, quite a few tourist-type information and fact based contributions, some wonderful poetry, an occasional piece of ...

My Beautiful Bahrain: A Collection of Short Stories and Poetry about Life and Living in Bahrain

Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account work spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years.

Political Repression in Bahrain

Dilmun was a land which stretched beyond the confines of Bahrain, as far north as Kuwait, and as far south as Saudi Arabia. The quest for the real Dilmun began when the author revisited Bahrain in order to explore the thousands of undated burial mounds scattered across the country. A season's digging established the existence of a major civilisation dating from around 2300 BC. First published in 1969, this fascinating book of discovery tells the story of archaeological detective work with style and humour. It is re-issued here for a new generation of readers and introduced by Carl Phillips, one of the leading archaeologists of the region.

Looking for Dilmun

Poetic Bahrain: A collection of contemporary poetry about the Kingdom of Bahrain

In this, the third of the Old Fools Trilogy, Vicky and Joe leave their Spanish mountain village to work for a year in the Middle East. How could they know that the Arab Spring was poised to erupt, throwing them into violent events that would make world headlines?

Two Old Fools on a Camel: From Spain to Bahrain and Back Again (Old Fools, #3)

As popular uprisings spread across the Middle East, popular wisdom often held that the Gulf States would remain beyond the fray. In "Sectarian Gulf", Toby Matthiesen paints a very different picture, offering the first assessment of the Arab Spring across the region. With first-hand accounts of events in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Matthiesen tells the story of the early protests, and illuminates how the regimes quickly suppressed these movements.

Pitting citizen against citizen, the regimes have warned of an increasing threat from the Shia population. Relations between the Gulf regimes and their Shia citizens have soured to levels as bad as 1979, following the Iranian revolution. Since the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain in mid-March 2011, the "Shia threat" has again become the catchall answer to demands for democratic reform and accountability. While this strategy has ensured regime survival in the short term, Matthiesen warns of the dire consequences this will have—for the social fabric of the Gulf States, for the rise of transnational Islamist networks, and for the future of the Middle East.

Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &amp; Francis, an informa company.

Bahrain Through the Ages

The book is a study of political development in Bahrain during the first five years after its independence in 1971. It is based on field research done by the author as the first senior Fulbright scholar in that country. The book was banned in Bahrain for 30 years but was allowed to be published in Arabic in that country in 2006. The study focuses on the tribal structure of Bahraini society and the rule of a minority Sunni government by al-Khalifa family over a largely disenfranchised Shia majority. To examine the making of the new state, the book analyzes the nature and characteristics of the Bahraini tribal society, the educational system of modern Bahrain, the nature of the political system, and popular demands for participation in decision making. The book also examines the making of the new constitution, the first ever national election to both the Constitutional Assembly and the National Assembly, and the electoral campaigns and candidates. The book also discusses the restrictions on freedoms of speech and assembly, the denial of women the right to vote, the banning of political parties and the role of clubs as surrogate political gathering places, the exclusion of the Shia majority from the economic and political centers of power, and the absence of government accountability and transparency. The February 20ll popular uprising in Bahrain underscores some of the key challenges discussed in the book, especially the autocratic nature of the regime and the urgency of political reform for domestic stability.

Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society

The eight stories in Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country paint a vivid image of people living on the fringes in America, people who don't do what you might expect them to. Not stories of triumph over adversity, but something completely other. 

Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods's characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong—often the places where they were born. In "Zombie," a coming-of-age story like no other, two young girls find friendship with a mysterious woman in the local cemetery. "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" describes a lesbian couple trying to repair their relationship by dropping acid at a Mensa party. In "A New Mohawk," a man in romantic pursuit of a female political activist becomes inadvertently much more familiar with the Palestine/Israel conflict than anyone would have thought possible. And in the title story, Woods brings us into the mind of a queer goth teenager who faces ostracism from her small-town evangelical church.

In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country And Other Stories

What role does Qatar play in the Middle East and how does it differ from the other Gulf states? How has the ruling Al-Thani family shaped Qatar from a traditional tribal society and British protectorate to a modern state? How has Qatar become an economic superpower with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world? What are the social, political, and economic consequences of Qatar's extremely rapid development?

In this groundbreaking history of modern Qatar, Allen J. Fromherz presents a full portrait that analyzes Qatar's crucial role in the Middle East and its growing regional influence within a broader historical context. Drawing on original sources in Arabic, English, and French as well as his own fieldwork in the Middle East, the author deftly traces the influence of the Ottoman and British empires and Qatar's Gulf neighbors on the country prior to Qatar's meteoric rise in the post-independence era. Fromherz gives particular weight to the nation's economic and social history, from its modest origins in the pearling and fishing industries to the considerable economic clout it exerts today, a clout that comes with having the second-highest natural gas reserves in the region. He also looks at what the future holds for Qatar's economy as the country tries to diversify beyond oil and gas. Furthermore, the book examines the paradox of Qatar where monarchy, traditional tribal culture, and conservative Islamic values appear to coexist with ultra modern development and a large population of foreign workers who outnumber Qatari citizens.

This book is as unique as the country it documents--a multi-faceted picture of the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic make up of modern Qatar and its significance within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the wider region.

Qatar: A Modern History

Juan Cole examines Shi'i Islam as a world religion that has faced modernity on its own terms. He explores the little known history of Shi'i communities as far afield as Bahrain and India, giving attention as well to important centers such as Lebanon , Iraq, and Iran. He demonstrates the way in which the Shi'is have sought to define space and time as sacred, and to defend those spaces from encroachment by the Other, whether that other be Sunni Arab, Hindu, or European Christian.


Sacred Space And Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi'ite Islam

Discussions of the Arab world, particularly the Gulf States, increasingly focus on sectarianism and autocratic rule. These features are often attributed to the dominance of monarchs, Islamists, oil, and ‘ancient hatreds’. To understand their rise, however, one has to turn to a largely forgotten but decisive episode with far-reaching repercussions – Bahrain under British colonial rule in the early twentieth century.
 
Drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined Arabic literature as well as British archives, Omar AlShehabi details how sectarianism emerged as a modern phenomenon in Bahrain. He shows how absolutist rule was born in the Gulf, under the tutelage of the British Raj, to counter nationalist and anti-colonial movements tied to the al-Nahda renaissance in the wider Arab world. A groundbreaking work, "Contested Modernity" challenges us to reconsider not only how we see the Gulf but the Middle East as a whole.

Contested Modernity: Sectarianism, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Bahrain

Following on from My Beautiful Bahrain, written by both locals and expats with fascinating personal 'life' stories, tourist-type information and fact based contributions, some wonderful poetry and compelling fiction (set in the Kingdom), More of My Beautiful Bahrain is another varied and unique collection of short stories and poetry about life and living on this tiny little island in the Arabian Sea. Twenty-seven chapters by 24 writers including; English, Irish, American, Canadian, Pakistani, Indian, Palestinian, Kuwaiti, Australian, Nepalese, Yemeni and German, with contributions from Bahraini writers too, this is a must-read for travellers and visitors to the island, as well as for people moving there, living there, doing business there, or just interested in what life is like there.

More of My Beautiful Bahrain: More short stories and poetry about life and living in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Grace Scott returns from honeymoon with her new husband, Mac, to find a man lying dead in their new Edinburgh flat. They don't know who he is or where he's come from.
The mystery of his identity remains unsolved. Then, three months later, Grace finds a note tucked inside one of the wedding gifts which sends her on a journey to discover what really happened in her flat. A journey that becomes more dangerous the closer she comes to the truth . . . What she discovers will change her life.
  Set in Edinburgh and travelling to Amsterdam, Paris and Copenhagen, CITY OF STRANGERS is a gripping story of deception, lies and corruption.


City of Strangers

Harriet Crawford presents a scholarly and up-to-date account of the archaeology of the Arabian Gulf from c. 4500-1500 BC. She offers a new interpretation of the structure of the urban, centralized and probably literate society of the Early Dilmun period (c. 2000-1800 BC) using material from the recently excavated site of Saar on the main Bahrain island. Like the neighboring societies in Oman and the Emirates, Dilmun was greatly influenced by its participation in the complex trade routes linking it to Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

Dilmun and Its Gulf Neighbours

In this path-breaking and multi-layered account of one of the least explored societies in the Middle East, Nelida Fuccaro examines the political and social life of the Gulf city and its coastline, as exemplified by Manama in Bahrain. Written as an ethnography of space, politics and community, it addresses the changing relationship between urban development, politics and society before and after the discovery of oil. By using a variety of local sources and oral histories, Fuccaro questions the role played by the British Empire and oil in state-making. Instead, she draws attention to urban residents, elites and institutions as active participants in state and nation building. She also examines how the city has continued to provide a source of political, social and sectarian identity since the early nineteenth century, challenging the view that the advent of oil and modernity represented a radical break in the urban past of the region.

Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800

A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas: Real Stories from Bahrain was written during and after the author's four-month stay in the Middle Eastern island kingdom of Bahrain. With a photographer's eye, a journalist's nose for news and a poet's way with words, Ronald W. Kenyon recounts his observations and displays his insightful understanding of Arab and Islamic culture, customs and religion with particular emphasis on Bahrain. In a wide-ranging series of vignettes and anecdotes, the author takes the reader from the temples and towns of the 5,000-year old Dilmun civilization to the glitz of twenty-first century shopping malls. He offers vivid descriptions of sanguinary religious rites, the tribulations of haggling with a taxi driver whose fare has to be paid in three different currencies and his body clock's disorientation from dealing with three different weekends. While not a guidebook, A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas is a meticulously-researched primer for anyone visiting or working in Bahrain or the armchair traveler who wants to learn more about current events in the Middle East than what appears in the mainstream media. In the last chapter of the book, entitled "The Truth about Bahrain," the author strives for objectivity, attempting to set the record straight by placing the current events in Bahrain in their historical, geopolitical and religious context. The author is optimistic about the future of Bahrain and dedicates his book to the people of Bahrain "in the earnest hope that they may, with God's grace, achieve everlasting harmony."

A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas: Real Stories from Bahrain

The development and, eventually, the flourishing of the short story in Bahrain, in addition to the crucial role of the middle class in spreading political and social awareness, was also indebted to the influence of the Arab writers, in particular in Egypt, whose writers enlightened the Arab masses literarily as well as politically. In the meantime, the circulation of the local newspapers in which the writers were able to publish their materials, indeed, consolidated the establishing of the genre of the short story in Bahrain and other Gulf states.

Voices II: Contemporary Bahraini Short Stories

Who Shot Ahmed? recounts the murder of a 22-year-old videographer, killed in cold blood in the dead of night at the height of Bahrain’s Arab Spring revolution. On a small island Kingdom swirling with political, economic, and sectarian tensions, Ahmed’s murder epitomized everything that had gone wrong since 2011, when pro-democracy protesters took to the streets in droves. Drawing on dozens of testimonies, journalist Elizabeth Dickinson traces the tale of Ahmed’s death and his family’s fearless quest for justice. Darting between narratives and delving into characters, it is a tale of a life lost and the great powers—from Washington to London, and Riyadh to Manama—that did nothing to stop the crisis. Dickinson has a deep knowledge of the region, but she brings a story from a foreign land straight back home: Ahmed could be any of our sons. 

Elizabeth Dickinson is an American journalist based in Abu Dhabi. Reporting from five continents, she has served as assistant managing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, Nigeria correspondent for The Economist, as well as contributing Editor at World Affairs and correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. Her work has additionally appeared in The National, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Washington Monthly, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. This work is based on her independent investigation and does not represent the views of her employers.

Who Shot Ahmed? A Mystery Unravels in Bahrain's Botched Arab Spring

Set in the The Kingdom of Bahrain, in a time when the pace of life was slower, the pages of this extraordinary odyssey are crowded with everything from sex-mad expatriates, a ghost and a mermaid to an encounter with the veteran foreign correspondent who felled Max Schmeling. There are lotharios and lesbians, a high seas murder, a two-fisted British prison warder, and the Bahrainis themselves, gentle and generous, who provide the backdrop for this revealing insight into a way of life largely gone, from the coffee ritual at the palace to crafts of yesteryear. From drunken diplomats to drunken journalists, Andrew Trimbee lifts the lid on life in a facinating, but mysterious, country as he intervenes to save his newspaper. The Inshallah Paper is a non-stop roller-coaster ride through drama, pathos, humour and suspense in a desert island setting straight out of the Arabian Nights.

The Inshallah Paper

Britain's relationship with the Gulf region remains one of the few unexplored episodes in the study of British decolonization. The decision, announced in 1968, to leave the Gulf within three years represented an explicit recognition by Britain that its 'East of Suez' role was at an end. This book examines the decision-making process which underpinned this reversal and considers the interaction between British decision-making, and local responses and initiatives, in shaping the modern Gulf. Using sources previously unavailable to scholars, "Britain's Revival and Fall in the Gulf "is a valuable addition to the studies on the modern Gulf.

Britain's Revival and Fall in the Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, 1950-71

"Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia" is a three-volume study of the Arabic dialects spoken in Bahrain by its older generation, and of the socio-cultural factors which produced them. The material on which the study is based consists of hundreds of hours of transcribed conversations gathered in the mid-1970s. All major social variables are covered in the speaker sample. Volume I, "Glossary," lists all the words, with extensive contextual exemplification, which occur in the complete set of texts. Volume II will present these complete texts, and an annotated and translated selection, together with an introduction on the origins of the eastern Arabian vocabulary, and cross references to previous works on the dialects of the area and to the Classical lexica. Volume III is a detailed study of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the dialects.

Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, Volume 1: Glossary

When Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Gulf states became the focus of frenzied international interest for the second time in a decade, the first having been during the Iraq-Iran war, 1980-8. Both events posed major threats to the regional state system which had evolved over almost two centuries. This book is based on a wide range of primary materials, including declassified documents used here for the first time. It defines and describes the geopolitical framework of the region and the state system which emanated from it. It explains how the Gulf states owe their creation and survival, sometimes against many odds, to forces well beyond the waters of the Gulf. Rosemarie Said Zahlan tells the story of the formation of the states, their evolution from colonial dependency to statehood, their socio-econo mic transformation by oil, and their stability in the midst of change. She illuminates their relationships with each other, with the wider Arab world, and with the major world powers. The result is an informed and balanced picture of the political, economic, religious and cultural character of the region. It is also a story of the powerful families and their shaikhs who have had to lead their countries so rapidly into the modern world, all the while preserving their own socio-political traditions.

The making of the modernGulf states: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman

The oil-producing states of the Arab Gulf are said to sink or swim on their capacity for political appeasement through economic redistribution. Yet, during the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring, in Bahrain and all across the Arab Gulf, ordinary citizens showed an unexpected enthusiasm for political protest directed against governments widely assumed to have co-opted their support with oil revenues. Justin Gengler draws on the first-ever mass political survey in Bahrain to demonstrate that neither is the state willing to offer all citizens the same bargain, nor are all citizens willing to accept it. Instead, shared social and religious identities offer a viable basis for mass political coordination. Challenging the prevailing rentier interpretation of political life in the Gulf states, Gengler offers new empirical evidence and a new conceptual framework for understanding the attitudes of ordinary citizens.

Bahrain

The Meeting Point

Lucy Caldwell

My Beautiful Bahrain: A Collection of Short Stories and Poetry about Life and Living in Bahrain

Robin Barratt

Political Repression in Bahrain

Marc Jones

Looking for Dilmun

Geoffrey Bibby

Poetic Bahrain: A collection of contemporary poetry about the Kingdom of Bahrain

Robin Barratt

Two Old Fools on a Camel: From Spain to Bahrain and Back Again (Old Fools, #3)

Victoria Twead

Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't

Toby Matthiesen

Bahrain Through the Ages

Shaikha Haya Ali Al Khalifa

Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society

Emile A. Nakhleh

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country And Other Stories

Chavisa Woods

Qatar: A Modern History

Allen J. Fromherz

Sacred Space And Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi'ite Islam

Juan R.I. Cole

Contested Modernity: Sectarianism, Nationalism, and Colonialism in Bahrain

Omar H. AlShehabi

More of My Beautiful Bahrain: More short stories and poetry about life and living in the Kingdom of Bahrain

Robin Barratt

City of Strangers

Louise Millar

Dilmun and Its Gulf Neighbours

Harriet E.W. Crawford

Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800

Nelida Fuccaro

A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas: Real Stories from Bahrain

Ronald W. Kenyon

Voices II: Contemporary Bahraini Short Stories

Hasan Marhamah

Who Shot Ahmed? A Mystery Unravels in Bahrain's Botched Arab Spring

Elizabeth Dickinson

The Inshallah Paper

Andrew Trimbee

Britain's Revival and Fall in the Gulf: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, 1950-71

Simon C. Smith

Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia, Volume 1: Glossary

Clive Holes

The making of the modernGulf states: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman

Rosemarie Said Zahlan

Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State

Justin Gengler

Tribe and State in Bahrain: The Transformation of Social and Political Authority in an Arab State

Fuad I. Khuri