RaveFinancial Times (UK)\"Well-researched and elegantly written, Black Wave...is particularly strong and vivid at the start, where the author describes the Lebanon of the 1970s, a haven for revolutionaries from around the world and from where some of the Iranian guerrillas would emerge who would play a key role in the toppling of the Shah. Ghattas’s book is a colourful account of their lives, interspersed with lines of poetry and the songs of the divas who defined the sound of that era ... The book often gets nuances right ... Another strength is that the book connects different countries and regions that are usually looked at separately, such as Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran but also Pakistan, and shows how 1979 was transformative in all of them ... Black Wave is a sobering testament to all those who have dreamt of a different Middle East, and sometimes paid with their lives for it.
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