The well-known journalist Tomás Alcoverro travels to Syria to chronicle the conflict that is bleeding the country to death and there he is confronted with a disheartening panorama: the place he has known and loved for more than forty years is losing its open and cosmopolitan character by leaps and bounds.
Something similar is happening in many other parts of the region, in Egypt for example, due to the impact of radical Islam on life and customs. The book thus becomes an elegy for a vanishing Arab world. With his usual mastery, his taste for human detail, for the experiences of people in the street and for culture, Alcoverro takes us on a journey through the lesser-known side of one of the most exciting regions in the world.
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About Tomás Alcoverro
Tomás Alcoverro has been the uninterrupted correspondent for 'La Vanguardia' for four decades. First in Beirut, then in Paris (where he covered the negotiations between the Suárez government and the exiled president of the Catalan Generalitat Tarradellas, accompanying him on his historic return to Spain), Athens and Beirut, where he still lives. He has published more than eight thousand chronicles, almost all of them on Middle Eastern affairs. After graduating in Law, where he later became an assistant professor of International Public Law at the Faculty of Law in Barcelona, and Journalism in Madrid, he began his professional adventure abroad. He had collaborated as a young man in local newspapers, and later in the magazines 'Destino', 'Cuadernos para el diálogo', 'Ínsula', beginning to write in 'Correo Catalán', 'La Vanguardia', whose international politics section he joined in 1965, and 'ABC', in which he published literary articles.
Alcoverro has witnessed all the major conflicts in the Middle East, from the 1973 Arab-Israeli October war, the Turkish military intervention in Cyprus the following year, the long Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990, the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the eight-year long Iran-Iraq conflict, the Palestinian intifadas or the US invasions in Iraq. He was one of the few foreign correspondents who held out in West Beirut during the time of terror and kidnappings. He confesses that he has never had to work as hard as he does now, in this exciting but uncertain time for the Arab peoples. His recent reports on Syria and Damascus are an example of his honesty and style.
Author of essays and short stories, lecturer and translator, he also collaborates with television and radio stations. He has been writing his blog 'Diario de Beirut' for several years. He has been decorated for his work with the Encomienda de Isabel la Católica, the Creu de Sant Jordi, and has won the Godó, Gaziel, Cirilo Rodríguez, Ortega y Gasset (shared with the other Spanish correspondents stationed in Baghdad in the winter of 2003), Vázquez Montalbán, Club internacional de prensa de Madrid, and Interpress journalism prizes.
He has published two books of chronicles: 'El Decano, Espejismos de Oriente', a book of conversations about Israel with Pilar Rahola and has published his book of journalistic writings entitled: 'La historia desde mi balcón'. His latest book, 'Why Damascus? Estampas de un mundo árabe que se desvanece', was published last April. It includes texts not only about the Syrian people, its people and landscapes, its endless war, but also writings about the decadence of the way of life in Egypt, Lebanon, and political reflections on the serious events in the Middle East. Alcoverro is a fervent advocate of the personal, literary style of the chronicle. He lives in Beirut, which he has passionately proclaimed as his city, his vocation.