Böcker av Cathy Sultan

Cathy Sultan offers further insight into the disturbing and seemingly unsolvable situation in the Middle East. Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A dialogue with Both Sides is part adventure, part history, part travelogue, all bound together with a startling collection of interviews which this courageous housewife from Wisconsin conducted first-hand in a variety of sometimes not-so-safe places. Her cinematic account of a narrow escape from Ramallah into East Jerusalem prior to a military assault on the town leaves the reader breathless. This book is a continuance of the author's bold quest to bring peace to a region tragically gripped by obduracy and fanaticism. Readers will be astounded at the poignant and sometimes frightening opinions of the ordinary people Sultan meets and interviews.

Through history, research and personal interviews, Cathy Sultan chronicles life in southern Lebanon and northern Israel during the brutal war of the summer of 2006. As in her other critically acclaimed books, Sultan focuses on ordinary people, who are overlooked by politicians and military leaders and become victims of poor decisions made by the governments of Israel, Lebanon and the United States.She vividly portrays the polluting effects of cluster bombs and explains how different factions within the Lebanese government keep it on the brink of further violence. She writes of the tiny Shabba Farms area's importance to Hezbollah and of the refugee camp that holds members of Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni militant group, despite efforts of the Lebanese army. Sultan also addresses media treatment of the war, dispels common myths about the region, and includes a timeline of Lebanese history, and maps depicting violence around the area.

As a young woman Cathy Sultan dreamed of living in a foreign land. She realized that dream in 1969 when she moved with her Lebanese husband and two infants from the United States to Beirut--a city known for its welcoming residents, breathtaking landscape and cosmopolitan culture. Sultan quickly grew to adore Beirut despite its seedy side and came to think of it as her dysfunctional lover. Even after the onset of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 her feelings were slow to change. Using cooking as a tranquilizer, Sultan worked tirelessly to provide a home environment that was comforting to her family and inviting to friends. Even as bullets pierced her own kitchen and bombs destroyed the ancient city and the lives of loved ones, she and her family refused to be driven from their home and their humanity. A Beirut Heart: One Woman's War is the riveting story of how a wife and mother struggled to maintain order and normality amid the unspeakable cruelty of civil war.

The Syrian is a powerful contemporary novel of passion and betrayal, set against the brutal and bewildering outbreak of the Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, 2006.Nadia, a woman who has waited 13 years for a husband who was "disappeared," finally decides to declare him dead so she can marry an American physician, Andrew Sullivan. On the eve of her engagement party, her best friend Sonia, a well-connected war correspondent, rings to tell her that her husband may still be alive in a Syrian prison. Out to get Andrew for herself, Sonia draws in the powerful head of the Syrian secret police to help her in her Byzantine manipulations. Thus begins a series of dangerous plot twists that become increasingly bloody as Nadia attempts to rescue her husband, and the border conflict with Israel escalates.

In this masterly sequel to THE SYRIAN, author and Middle East expert Cathy Sultan once again uses her unique knowledge of the region to spin a suspenseful web of intrigue and deceit, mirroring the complexities of this ancient place where nothing is as it seems. In DAMASCUS STREET, a story set in a Lebanon still struggling to cope with the political repercussions of a bloody fifteen-year civil war, Andrew Sullivan, an idealistic American physician, becomes the unknowing pawn in a deadly spy game where an intricate cast of characters lures him into a maze of deception and illusion. As he attempts to find and rescue his fiancée Nadia Khoury, who has been kidnapped by Syria's former Intelligence chief, this riveting political thriller takes surprising turns in a tale of lost innocence, passion and survival.

HIS MISSION: TO DISMANTLE THE SYRIAN STATE. An Ambassador to Syria draws the reader into the shadowy beginnings of ISIS and its role in the disastrous Syrian conflict. The story, begun in Sultan's previous thrillers The Syrian and Damascus Street, continues with the arrival in Damascus of Robert Jenkins. He is no ordinary ambassador, nor is his mission one which could be described as routine. He is charged with initiating civil unrest to generate regime change, and the bloody havoc brought about in the ancient town of Homs is just the beginning. Is Bashar Assad a brutal dictator, as portrayed by Western media, or is he a Syrian nationalist intent on protecting his country from outside interference? Perhaps both, for in this ancient place of lost innocence there is always room for multiple truths. (827)"I love Cathy Sultan's latest work set in Syria. She catches the nuance and complexity of the situation when most authors write in bumper sticker slogans and speak in sound bites. As with her memoir, A Beirut Heart: One Woman's War, Cathy brings life to her work by creating compelling characters that feel like they live in the real world."-Jack Rice, former Central Intelligence Agency Officer.