A Literary Map of the Middle East - Indigo Fiction Blog Piece #2

This is the introduction to my latest "Literary Review" on Indigo's Fiction blog:

 Even now, or perhaps especially now—with the hope that has emerged with the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and the potential for revolution in Syria (and less so in Libya)—the ever-pressing concern remains over the stability of the Middle East. And that’s not to mention the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Dictatorships, military rule, a peace process that may never come to pass: what good, one wonders, can come of all this strife? It brings to mind that wonderful quote from the film “The Third Man” about Italy having thirty years of warfare, terror and murder under the Borgias but producing Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance; while in Switzerland they had peace, democracy and five hundred years of brotherly love: “And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

The hope, then, is that all that strife will—at a minimum—contribute to the overall cultural value of the region, and it doesn’t take much digging to discover all that it has to offer in literary treasures ... 

Read the rest here.