• Parts: 1
• Subject: Essays / General Culture
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Edition: First
• Dimensions: 17x24 cm
• Number of Pages: 218
• Weight: 340 g
• Language: Arabic

In his famous book "Echo Chambers," Cass Sunstein warns that healthy societies do not rely solely on freedom of expression to survive and thrive. Rather, they may have a greater need to break out of the closed boxes of their respective groups (which he calls "walled communities") and engage in sometimes uncomfortable collective experiences with the issues, people, and ideas that others discuss. In our Arab world, the issue of daring to step out from behind these walls and accept the existence of others—let alone their different ideas about the world—remains an elusive, distant dream. The overwhelming majority lives, and is comfortable living, in separate and isolated linguistic, national, religious, ethnic, and cultural groups, whose boundaries were drawn by colonizers over a century ago, creating fabricated, surplus identities on top of our accumulated stock of other fragmented identities.

- From the author's introduction

Of course, this understanding is impossible without the knowledge-makers, whom we must, in this world that grows more superficial by the day, find amidst enormous piles of dust and dirt. This is a difficult task, one that we believe Nada Hoteit has largely succeeded in accomplishing in this book. She has captured those texts that push people to act "outside the familiar, the tamed, and the gray," texts that are necessarily controversial and argumentative. They are texts that push the wheel forward, even if their decisive impact may not be apparent for many years, with varying artistic and aesthetic value between one work and another. The book also highlights works that cast a stone into stagnant ponds, "provoking the reader, perhaps compelling them to engage in magical experiences on ships of words," or introducing them to intellectual aspects that did not receive sufficient attention at the time, due to the turmoil and ferment of the era.

- From the foreword by Professor Fadel Al-Sultani

Nada Hoteit is a Lebanese-British writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. She graduated in 2017 with a Master's degree with honors in documentary filmmaking from Kingston University, London, and holds a postgraduate diploma in theater directing from the Institute of Fine Arts, Beirut. She writes regular articles on politics, cultural phenomena, and media for the London-based newspapers "Asharq Al-Awsat" and "Al-Quds Al-Arabi." She is also a poet with a published collection (No City Wears Me, Dar Al-Farabi, 2017 Beirut).