In a time of monsters : travels through a Middle East in revolt / Emma Sky

Prologue: What had it all been for? -- Hold your head up, you're an Egyptian! (Egypt, May 2011) -- Dégage! Tunisia! (June 2011) -- 'Assad -- or we burn the country' (Syria, July 2011) -- They are all thieves Iraq (June 2011 and January 2012) -- Zero neighbours without problems (Turkey, October 2012) -- Better sixty years of tyranny than one night of anarchy Saudi Arabia (December 2012) -- ...to the hill of frenckincense (Oman, December 2012) -- We have no friends but the mountains (Kurdistan, July 2013) -- ...but surely we are brave, who take the Golden Road to Samarkand (The Silk Road, June 2014) -- The Islamic State: a caliphate in accordance with the prophetic method (Jordan, March 2015) -- What happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East (The Balkans, January 2016) -- And even though it all went wrong (Britain, June-July 2016) -- Epilogue: the sun also rises

Returning to the UK in September 2010 after serving in Iraq as the political adviser to the top American general, Emma Sky felt no sense of homecoming. She soon found herself back in the Middle East travelling through a region in revolt.In A Time of Monsters bears witness to the demands of young people for dignity and justice during the Arab Spring; the inability of sclerotic regimes to reform; the descent of Syria into civil war; the rise of the Islamic State; and the flight of refugees to Europe. With deep empathy for its people and an extensive understanding of the Middle East, Sky makes a complex region more comprehensible. A great storyteller and observational writer, Sky also reveals the ties that bind the Middle East to the West and how blowback from our interventions in the region contributed to the British vote to leave the European Union and to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States