Mountain against the Sea

Offers eleven vignettes of Palestine's cultural life in the first half of the twentieth century. This book presents the memoirs, diaries, letters, and other writings of six Jerusalem intellectuals whose lives spanned the period of 1918-1948: a musician, a teacher, a former aristocrat, a doctor, a Bolshevik revolutionary, and a Jewish novelist. "Irreverent, erudite, captivating, and deeply informed, Mountain against the Sea is a must-read book by the leading essayist on the cultural history of Palestine and the Palestinians."—Beshara Doumani, author of Rediscovering Palestine "The preeminent Palestinian historical sociologist, Salim Tamari, exhibits his masterful range and inquiring intelligence in this engrossing study of important aspects of the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Palestine and the Levant over the past century."—Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University This groundbreaking book on modern Palestinian culture goes beyond the usual focal point of the 1948 war to address the earlier, formative years. Drawing on previously unavailable biographies of Palestinians (including Palestinian Jews), Salim Tamari offers eleven vignettes of Palestine's cultural life in the momentous first half of the twentieth century. He brings to light the memoirs, diaries, letters, and other writings of six Jerusalem intellectuals whose lives spanned (and defined) the period of 1918-1948: a musician, a teacher, a former aristocrat, a doctor, a Bolshevik revolutionary, and a Jewish novelist. These essays present an integrated cultural history that illuminates a watershed in the modern social history of the Arab East, the formulation of the Arab Enlightenment.