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Voted one of the Top 25 Books of 1999 by the Village Voice.

"An outstanding anthology of essays surveying the complexities of Mediterranean cultures; the diverse, changing space of the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa-areas of diasporas, dislocations, and genocidal exterminations provoked by nationalism and religious fanaticism. Of special interest are his observations and analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian confrontation, Arab/Jewish poetics, and Jewish identity in America."-Midwest Book Review

Table of Contents

Local Politics: The Background as Foreword Ammiel Alcalay
Acknowledgments
Five Hundred Years After: What Was Left Unsaid about Sepharad
Juan Goytisolo

PRELUDES: AN OPENING
``weighing the losses, like stones in your hand'
Atonement

OF BOOKS AND CITIES/ THE JOURNEY
My Mediterranean
The Quill's Embroidery: Untangling a Tradition
The Quill's Embroidery: Poetry, Tradition, and the ``Postmodern'
Paris / New York / Jerusalem: The Unscheduled Flight of Edmond Jabes and Jacques Derrida
Perplexity Index
Desert Solitaire: On Edmond Jabes
For Edouard Roditi
Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs

FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES, PROMISED LANDS
On Arabesques
After the Last Sky
Who's Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish?
Israel and the Levant: ``Wounded Kinship's Last Resort'
Forbidden Territory, Promised Lands
In True Colors
Culture without a Country
Too Much Past
The State of the Gulf: Abdelrahman Munif and Hanan al-Shaykh
Our Memory Has No Future: On Etel Adnan
``The war was ending, the diasporas beginning'

DISPATCHES
A Stitch in Time
Court Report: Prolonging a Farce
The Trial: A Real Farce
``Ay, de mi aljama': Palestinians and Israelis Meet, in Spain!
Israel / Palestine 101: A Letter to Robert Creeley
Quality Control
Ushering in the New Order: Repercussions from the Gulf War Reflections at the End of 1992
Why Israel?

THE RETURN: VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Understanding Revolution
Exploding Identities: Notes on Ethnicity and Literary History
Speaking with Forked Tongues, or Parables of Eq