Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays 1982-1999

$17.95

Author: Ammiel Alcalay

Publisher: City Lights Books (1999)

As a poet, translator, critic and scholar, Ammiel Alcalay has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Republic and Middle East Report, as well as for such literary journals as Grand Street, Conjunctions and Paper Air. In Memories of Our Future, the unique intellectual and political path forged by Alcalay over the past fifteen years has now been collected in one volume. In a mix of personal narrative, political commentary and literary criticism, Alcalay surveys diverse subjects, among them Mediterranean culture, Arabic literature, the destruction of Carthage, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the war in Bosnia.

"Ammiel Alcalay brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and a sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce and maintain literature. He is a unique and important figure in contemporary world literature."

–Lynne Tillman

"Few contemporary intellectuals can boast of as diverse a range of skills as Ammiel Alcalay. His work is cosmopolitan in the best sense: in an epoch of superficial globalism his approach to the cultures he deals with is always rigorous, always meticulously respectful of particularities and differences. There is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today's 'culture wars,' locally and globally."

–Amitav Ghosh