The Levant: A Short History of the Middle East, by G.S. Willmott is one of those unclassifiable books that moves seamlessly between fact and fiction. From the stone age to modern times, the author follows the fortunes of the Middle East, giving a broad historical perspective as well as more intimate stories about characters, familiar and not familiar, from different eras. We follow Orr and his tribe as they go hunting for deer and find an elephant instead, Hugues de Payens, a young man soon to be a knight, Saul, the boy who would become a king, David with his sling, the Knights Templar, and, in more modern times, Vida, a Jewish woman who lost her family in the holocaust, but who lived on to become an associate of Benjamin Netanyahu. Storytelling about individual people renders broad history much more interesting, and the fortunes of these characters, real, imagined or a combination of both, makes the story feel real. Readers of G.S. Willmott's other books will know what to expect, and will probably be moved to do some extra research on their own. - Sally Odgers, Editor and Author
