This is first of all a book about war -- in particular, the wars that have scarred the Middle East, from Afghanistan to Algeria, throughout the author's long career as a correspondent for the London Times and then the Independent. It switches back and forth across the 20th century in a way that seems driven more by stream of consciousness than by any linear design, and, as befits its topic, it is a book of almost unremitting violence. The author presents himself both as unflinching witness and implacable judge of the events he recounts, for he believes that he is telling a story of unrelenting perfidy and betrayal -- in part a story of Middle Easterners being betrayed by themselves and their leaders, but mostly one of the Middle East being betrayed by the power, greed and arrogance of the West.
Fisk has thrown himself into the fiery pit time after time, often at grave personal risk -- Afghanistan at the beginning of the long struggle against the Soviets, the bloodbath of the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, the civil war in Algeria after 1991, the second Palestinian intifada since the fall of 2000. When he is not personally in the midst of conflict and destruction, he evokes them, as in his lengthy discussion of the Armenian deportations and massacres of World War I or (in a different register) his treatment of the shah of Iran's prisons and torture chambers.
However Fisk regards himself, he is at bottom a war correspondent, and the fabric of his book is woven largely from his battlefield reporting. Fisk's writing on war is vivid, graphic, intense and very personal. Readers will encounter no "collateral damage" here, only homes destroyed and bodies torn to shreds. At times, as one horror is heaped upon another, it all seems too much to absorb or bear.
That intensity is both the book's great strength and one of its principal weaknesses. After reading it, no one can hide from the immense human costs of the decisions made by generals and politicians, Middle Eastern or otherwise. But Fisk portrays the Middle East as a place of such unrelieved violence that the reader can hardly imagine that anyone has enjoyed a single ordinary day there over the past quarter-century. That picture is a serious distortion. Life in the region is far from easy, but in spite of endemic anxiety and frustration, most Middle Easterners, most of the time, are able to get on tolerably well. Fisk says little about more abstract, less violent issues such as economic stagnation, the complexities of political Islam or the status of women. This gap is not a weakness in itself -- Fisk is writing about different themes -- but readers need to be aware that, despite its staggering length, this book is not The Complete Middle East.
