“Skillfully written and scrupulously researched, Black Wave is an essential book in understanding the origins of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.” —Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower
shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize 2020
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Black Wave is an unprecedented narrative examination of the unraveling of the modern Middle East and why it started with the pivotal year of 1979.
Seamlessly weaving history, geopolitics, and intimate storytelling, Kim Ghattas tells the gripping and largely unexplored story of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, a conflict born from the sparks of the 1979 Iranian revolution, fueled by American policy, and that, Ghattas argues, represents the true heart of the Middle East’s bloody turmoil.
With vivid story-telling, extensive historical research, and on-the-ground reporting, Ghattas dispels accepted truths about a region she calls home. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, now mortal enemies, were once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the Middle East. But all of that changed after 1979. Distorting and deploying religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics, each side proceeded to strategically feed intolerance, suppress cultural expression, and encourage sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan. This ongoing war for cultural supremacy has led to Iran’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, the assassination of countless intellectuals, the birth of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS.
Ghattas introduces us to a riveting cast of characters whose lives were upended by decades of geopolitical drama: from the Pakistani television anchor who defied her country’s dictator, to the Egyptian novelist thrown in jail for indecent writings, to journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Black Wave is both an intimate and sweeping history of the region and will fundamentally alter our understanding of the Middle East.
REVIEWS AND PRAISE FOR BLACK WAVE
“An artful, gripping, timely, and humane account of the roots and consequences of the destructive rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia from one of the region’s most insightful and incisive observers” —Ambassador William J. Burns, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Deputy Secretary of State
“Skillfully written and scrupulously researched, Black Wave is an essential book in understanding the origins of the modern conflicts in the Middle East.” —Vali Nasr, author of The New York Times bestseller Shia Revival
“Black Wave is a brilliant piece of work. Ghattas reveals how the competition between Tehran and Riyadh, instigated in 1979 by the Iranian revolution and the siege of Mecca―and intensified after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq―led to the instrumentalization of Islam to destroy cosmopolitanism, to force women to veil, and to mobilize sectarian extremists.” —Emma Sky, senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute and author of In a Time of Monsters
“Clear-eyed and honest, perfectly researched and brilliantly written, a unique book that is about more than the Saudi-Iran rivalry as it illuminates how and why the region began to turn inward over the last 100 years―a must read for outsiders and people in the region.” —Marwan Muasher, Vice President for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former minister of foreign affairs of Jordan
“Kim Ghattas’s brilliant book Black Wave reveals in masterful detail the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and its pernicious effect on the wider region, from 1979 to the present day — a sharp and sobering analysis, beautifully written, and published at exactly the right time.” —Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
“Whatever happens next in this long-running, oppressive and dangerous Middle Eastern drama, Black Wave will be a vivid, indispensable guide to the story so far.” —Ian Black, former Middle East editor for The Guardian and visiting senior fellow at the Middle East Centre, LSE
“This blistering history of the relentless, all-consuming hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran reads like a thriller.”
—The Sunday Times review
“Ghattas, a former BBC Middle East correspondent who was born and brought up in Beirut, mixes history and reportage to describe the three events of 1979, as well asbtheir origins and consequences. The result is a fascinating and winding but highly readable tale.”
—The Times (Jan. 15 book of the week)
“... a superbly researched and subtly told story—current history at its best.”
—The Wall Street Journal review
“Too many in the West ... wrongly attribute the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran to age-old theological differences between Sunnis and Shiites. ... Ghattas’s narrative upends this Western misconception.”
—The New York Times review
“Accessible et captivant, Black Wave se lit comme un roman et séduit surtout par l’originalité de sa construction et de sa perspective.” (Accessible and captivating, Black Wave reads like a novel and captivates above all by the originality of its construction and perspective.)
—Le Grand Continent review
—Featured on Monocle24 Radio's Meet the Writers