About This Man Called Ali: The Purple Life of an Arab Artist - Hardcover

Amal Ghandour

4.21

14 ratings by Goodreads

9781906011321: About This Man Called Ali: The Purple Life of an Arab Artist

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 190601132X ISBN 13: 9781906011321

Publisher: Eland Publishing Ltd, 2009

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This fascinating, intimate and candid biography reveals the intricate realities of the Middle East. Ali Al Jabri was an Arab artist who was murdered in 2002, a violent and lonely end to a life of passionate creativity and a restless search for identity. Ali was stranded between an English education and a struggle to find relevance in his Arab homeland, caught between his talents and his insecurities, his sexuality and the claims of his distinguished family. Amal Ghandour s painstakingly researched portrait reaches beyond the angst of a troubled artist to illuminate a whole people and a lost era. The author reveals the lasting effects of colonial attitudes, and how the twin brutalities of the Arab world Islamic fundamentalism and nationalistic military regimes have waged war against the cultural and political possibilites of the region. Ali refused to remain an Arab expatriate, an exile in the gilded drawing rooms of Manhattan, Paris and London, and for this he paid with his life.

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Review:

"Arab gays are under siege in societies that want to pretend they don't exist. But a new biography of an Arab artist offers another view."
Newsweek, April 23, 2009

"Ali was a scion of the ancient and decaying aristocracy in Aleppo, Syria, who sometimes styled himself, improbably and ironically, the last descendant of Saladin . ..his was a life of parallel universes. He found in these contrasting worlds ecstasy and inspiration, but also injury, frustration and fear...it s sadly ironic that Ghandour s amicable but unflinching work... should be coming out in Britain now, only weeks after Amnesty International denounced the murder of dozens of homosexuals in what the Bush administrations used to refer to as liberated Iraq." Newsweek, 27 April 2009 --Newsweek, 27 April 2009

"The worlds of Lawrence of Arabia, of Cavafy and of contemporary art come together in this life of Ali al Jabri, the first biography of a modern Arab artist." --Philip Mansel

"This vivid account of the life of the Arab artist Ali Jabri is more than a fascinating biography; it is a history of the Middle East told through the fortunes of a powerful Syrian family." --Helen Kennedy QC

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