My Great Arab Melancholy is a beautiful, tragic and award-winning book from Lebanese writer and illustrator Lamia Ziadé. Blending the author’s years of research, personal memoir and more than 300 illustrations, this compelling history of the modern Arab world explores the major thinkers, struggles and turning points that have shaped the Middle East as we know it today.

Ziadé begins in South Lebanon, ‘land of martyrs, ruins and passion’, before taking the reader further afield, to Beirut, Jerusalem, Cairo and Baghdad. The book moves from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, tracing the Arab world’s tragedies and the derailing of dreams and possibilities caused in large part by Western imperialism and the conquest of Palestine.

Within these pages there are the blasts of explosions, blood, tears and tragedy, cemeteries, wreaths and ribbons, martyrs and paradise. Ziadé unearths the buried memory of resistance fighters and their lost ideals. In haunting prose and unforgettable images she celebrates the progressive, bold, revolutionary moments and figures of the Arab world’s recent past.

Lamia Ziadé is a Lebanese author, illustrator and visual artist. Born in Beirut in 1968 and raised during the Lebanese Civil War, she moved to Paris at 18 to study graphic arts. She then worked as a designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier, exhibited her art in numerous galleries internationally, and went on to publish several illustrated books, including My Port of Beirut, Ma très grande mélancolie arabe which won the Prix France-Liban, Ô nuit, ô mes yeux and Bye bye Babylone.

Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She is the recipient of the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her translations include A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa, Zabor, or the Psalms by Kamel Daoud, Panics by Barbara Molinard, and The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras.

Award-winning illustrated chronicle of the modern Arab world, combining travelogue, memoir, history and gorgeous full-colour art

Author: Lamia Ziadé

Publisher: Pluto Press

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BROUDOU is delighted to present the second volume of our magazine. This year, it is dedicated to stories that traverse the world of olive oil. 

As a collective publication, we have gathered knowledge and perspectives on this sacred oil from artists, journalists, anthropologists, historians, poets, and even an archaeobotanist. Exploring the various dimensions of olive oil has taken us back thousands of years, out to Palestine and Egypt, into the homes of diaspora, and beyond. 

Questions of health, cultural symbolism, nation building, exile, beauty, and homesickness weave through the nearly 20 contributions which are available in English, Tunisian Arabic, and French. 

As with bread, olive oil has opened up enticing exchanges with people from all walks of life, and we hope for these conversations to stay open. By sharing these narratives, we hope to foster collective practices and engagements which bring forth systems that enrich rather than exploit the earth and the lifeforms which inhabit it.

BROUDOU is a non-profit publication and learning platform dedicated to exploring the future of food in Tunisia.

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WILD FLOWERS OF PALESTINE. American Colony Jerusalem. Arno Auer, Ingo Mittelstaedt. Ourpress

The American Colony was an independent, utopian, Christian Colony formed by religious pilgrims who emigrated to Jerusalem from the United States and Sweden in 1981. The history of the Colony is intimately linked to the photography collection it spawned.

2 colour stencil print
40 pages
25.5 x 17 cm

€10.00
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