The making of the modern Middle East

A Sunday Times Paperback of the Year
A Spectator and New Statesman Book of the Year

‘An illuminating and riveting read.’ – Jonathan Dimbleby

Jeremy Bowen, the International Editor of the BBC, has been covering the Middle East since 1989 and is uniquely placed to explain its complex past and its troubled present. Here, Bowen offers you a gripping and invaluable guide to the modern Middle East, how it came to be and what its future might hold.

In The Making of the Modern Middle East – in part based on his acclaimed podcast, ‘Our Man in the Middle East’ – Bowen takes you on a journey across the region and through its history. He meets ordinary men and women on the front line, their leaders, whether brutal or benign. He explores the power games that have so often wreaked devastation on civilian populations as those leaders, whatever their motives, jostle for political, religious and economic control.

Clear throughout is Bowen’s deep understanding of the political, cultural and religious differences between countries as diverse as Erdogan’s Turkey, Assad’s Syria, Netanyahu’s Israel, and Palestine, whether Hamas-controlled Gaza or the West Bank, and his long experience of covering events in the region.

‘[A] compelling blend of sweeping history and vivid memoir’ – Mail on Sunday