Samir Al-Stouhi
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Notes From Underground
(Zapiski iz podpolya)

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Dostoevsky's works are on every list but underground man is one character you will never forget.

"I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my ‘Notes’ here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it."

Notes from the Underground 
Fyodor Dostoevsky

1984

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Orwell's 1984 and Animal farm curved their own literary genre.

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

1984 
George Orwell

Children Of Gabalawi 
(أولاد حارتنا) 

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This brilliant piece of literature got Naguib Mahfouz the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The story recreates the tied history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene neighborhood.

Gabalawi being an allegory for religion in general, the first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam (Adham أدهم) and how he was favored by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including Satan/Iblis (Idris إدريس); Moses (Gabal جبل); Jesus (Rifa'a رفاعة); and Muhammad (Qasim قاسم). Families of each son settle in different parts of the alley, symbolising Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The protagonist of the book's fifth section is Arafa (عرفة), who symbolises modern science and, significantly, comes after all prophets, while all of their followers claim Arafa as one of their own.

From Beirut To Jerusalem

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From Beirut to Jerusalem, winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, is the startling, intense and thought-provoking account of Thomas L. Friedman's decade of reporting in the strife-ridden Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman has won two Pulitzer Prizes – one for his reporting in Beirut and one for reporting in Jerusalem, the two cities at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict. No two cities have received more headline coverage, nor been more hotly debated, and no reporter has covered them more in depth than Friedman. in his journey from Beirut to Jerusalem, Friedman gives us a panoramic view of both the political and personal conflicts. As a reporter for UPI and The New York Times, he was stationed in Beirut from 1979 to 1984, and in Lebanon from 1984 to 1989. He describes with intense vividness the sometimes horrifying, sometimes wondrous cities, for which, he says, nothing in his life had prepared him. Friedman brings alive his journey from Beirut to Jerusalem through anecdotes, history, analysis and self-examination – and puts all the currents into perspective with inimitable detail, clarity and remarkable insight. This is a much-needed framework for understanding the psychology and politics of the Middle East, and for understanding the future of this unique region.

The Anatomy of Revolution

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"After the government is overthrown, there is usually a period of optimistic idealism, and the revolutionaries engage in much perfectionist rhetoric. But this phase does not last very long. The practical tasks of governing have to be faced, and a split develops between moderates and radicals. It ends in the defeat of the moderates, the rise of extremists, and the concentration of all power in their hands. For one faction to prevail and maintain its authority, the use of force is almost inevitable. The goals of the revolution fade, as a totalitarian regime takes command. Some of the basic tenets of the original revolutionary movement, however, are eventually incorporated in the end. The French and Russian revolutions followed this course of development, as did the Islamic revolution in Iran in the late 20th century."



Indranil Palit, Chandan K. Reddy: Scalable and Parallel Boosting with MapReduce. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 24(10): 1904-1916 (2012)
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