Harry’s Place

I’ve had this book recommended to me:

“A Heaven of Others,” Joshua Cohen’s fourth book of fiction, is an Israeli boy’s account of the wrong heaven — the Muslim heaven of his murderer, a young Palestinian suicide bomber. Mistakenly transported to an afterlife of oases, obliging virgins and ravenous serpents that dwell in valleys of nails, […]

A belated happy new year to Harry’s Place readers. I’ve had very little opportunity to access the internet for the last few weeks, for a variety of reasons chief among which are the fact that it was Christmas, and the fact that NTL are the most catastophically inept providers of broadband in the universe. […]

Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda
by Michael Burleigh
576pp, Harper Press, £25
Concluding this review of a work of comparatively popular history (and by that I mean this is the sort of book which you could keep on your shelf and return to when in need of the basic facts of […]

Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda
by Michael Burleigh
576pp, Harper Press, £25
The thread below this one seems to have drawn an interesting discussion about the morality of capital punishment when applied to dictators, but at what point should we speak out strongly against oppressors? Whether or not Pius XII […]

Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda
by Michael Burleigh
576pp, Harper Press, £25
This is not a history of Christianity (or indeed of any other religion) but a book which according to it’s author explores the space “where culture, ideas, politics and religious faith meet” As such, it may be the most […]

It was my birthday yesterday. I remembered the second my three-year old burst into my room at 06:52 carrying a bag of presents she helpfully opened on my behalf. As well as the mobile digital radio that will help to make those interminable journeys to one of London’s terminals just that little bit more bearable, […]

The Guardian previews a published compilation of (mostly British) writers and authors views of the recent Iraq war. As one would expect most of those whose views were printed were against any action taking place although the reasons for coming to that conclusion varied.
Bestselling writer Louis de Bernieres thinks liberating Arabs from tyranny is likely […]

With the Dollar struggling against the Pound while I was in the Washington DC I went a bit mad in the Georgetown branch of Barnes & Noble.
After splashing the plastic to pay for it and other books I read this on the plane back to London. It’s essentially a blueprint for American foreign policy if […]