KAI BIRD |
Scholar, historian, and contributing editor to The Nation, Kai Bird grew up in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. He is in the U.S. from his home in Nepal, and visits here today to read from his memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956 - 1978 (Scribner). "Bird offers a compelling hybrid of memoir and history, weaving together recollections of his childhood in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt; the stories of his wife's Holocaust survivor parents; and rigorous scholarship on the region. The book's title—Mandelbaum Gate once separated Israeli-controlled western Jerusalem from the Jordanian-controlled east—indicates a view on the conflict, and it's certainly that, but it's also much more: readers are given ringside seats to Cairo under Nasser, the author's American family's friends (including Osama bin Laden's elder brother), and Bird's years in India and the U.S. during the heyday of the antiwar movement of the '60s. Notable events and figures (airplane hijacker Leila Khaled, for example, or the Palestinian-Jordanian battles known as Black September) are given detailed treatment and their continued resonance is made clear. Bird's brushes with history—his first girlfriend was held hostage on an airplane hijacked to win Khaled's release—brings home the deeply messy humanity of the stories he binds together in this kaleidoscopic and captivating book." - Publishers Weekly. Kai Bird's books include American Prometheus (co-written with Martin J. Sherwin), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Hiroshima's Shadow (with Lawrence Lifschultz).
- Street:
- The Elliott Bay Book Company
- Additional:
- 1521 Tenth Avenue
- City:
- Seattle ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98122
- Country:
- United States
