By Fire: Writings on the Arab Spring

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I would like to thank Jeffrey Green for his edits and suggestions on the book’s introduction; Marilyn Zucker, Peter Khost, and Astrid Wimmer for reading my translation of Par le feu; Franck Dalmas for his help with aspects of L’étincelle’s translation. Above all, I wish to express my gratitude to my publisher-father, the late Ruhul Amin Nezami, for inspiring me.

Browsing in a Paris bookshop in the summer of 2011, I picked up two books by Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, the novella Par le feu (By Fire) and the nonfiction L’étincelle (The Spark) — both works about the Arab Spring. A juggernaut of revolts against authoritarian regimes, the Arab Spring began the previous winter with uprisings throughout several countries in North Africa and the Middle East. At hand, the experts said, may be an era of fundamental political reform throughout the region. Journalists and political analysts were virtually unanimous that the Arab world was convulsively re-creating itself while we watched. Some North African and Middle Eastern countries would be changed in some way by the firestorm. Ben Jelloun published the two books with Gallimard in 2011 at the height of the protests.

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