IBEI Saint George reading list 2023
We want to help you find the perfect book for today's St. Jordi (St. George) - World Book Day. Browse through the list of recommendations by our faculty members for inspiration 📚🌹🐉
The UN declared 2023 as the year of Dialogue as a Guarantee of Peace. We asked some of our faculty members to recommend books on peacekeeping, political conflicts and diplomacy.
Milkman
Milkman
by Anna Burns
The story is about a young woman forced into a relationship, of sorts, with a married paramilitary. This is a forensic and imaginative exploration of how conflict - in this case the Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland - shape gender relations.
Milkman
Rich, experimental, and compelling, the story explores the challenges of daily life for communities who find themselves walking the tightrope between the forces of the state and the paramilitary forces. Utterly engrossing.
Prizes won:
Milkman is a highly praised and recognized fiction novel which got awarded several prizes, among them the Booker Prize in 2018.
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
by George Packer
This book tells the story of Richard Holbrooke, one of the most prominent US diplomats since World War II. Holbrooke is best known for being the architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, which put an end to the Bosnian war.
Our man
The book reminds us that diplomacy is often ugly, requiring a great deal of luck and improvisation, and hard to disentangle from the use of force.
It also underlines that peace agreements are not only an end, but also a beginning and that the compromises reached - ripe with moral dilemmas - are not always conducive to a comprehensive, sustainable, and just peace. All in all, this is a story about American hubris and the role it played since the Vietnam War, for better or worse.
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit / Lo que el día debe a la noche
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit / Lo que el día debe a la noche
by Yasmina Khadra
Khadra tells the story of Younes, a character raised between the French and Arab cultures in the context of the Algerian War of Independence. The conflict leads to a spiral of violence and radicalization that ultimately destroys Younes' world of mixed identities. The novel underscores the importance of intercultural dialogue in countering the destructive power of colonialism as well as the role of memory in healing trauma after conflict.
lo que el día
Did this book influence your current or past work? How?
This is a very good example of Maghrebi literature on the transition from colonial rule to independence, which helps understand the politics of memory in Algeria and France. The book also depicts how societies radicalize during war and the importance of intercultural dialogue in post-conflict.
To whom would you recommend this book?
Readers interested in the literature and history of Algeria and the Maghreb, and in the politics of memory in post-conflict and post-colonial contexts.
African Peacekeeping: New Approaches to African History
African Peacekeeping: New Approaches to African History
by Jonathan Fischer and Nina Wilén
This book looks at Africa's modern history and politics and at peacekeeping through a unique lens. Instead of focusing on peacekeeping in Africa, the authors, Jonathan Fisher, and Nina Wilén, concentrate on peacekeeping efforts by Africans.
African Peacekeeping
They show how peacekeeping has been integrated into Africa's national, regional, and international politics, and how this involvement has significant implications for understanding the continent, its history, and its politics.
🎙️ Join the book presentation at IBEI
On May 19th, the authors, Jonathan Fisher (University of Birmingham) and Nina Wilén (Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations), will present their book at IBEI.
Whose Bosnia?
Whose Bosnia? Nationalism and political imagination in the Balkans
by Edin Hajdarpasic
This book reveals the political pressures and moral arguments that made Bosnia a prime target of escalating nationalist activity in the 20th century.
Whose Bosnia
Hajdarpasic provides new insight into central themes of modern politics, illuminating core subjects like "the people," state-building, and national suffering.
Did this book influence your current or past work? How?
Whose Bosnia? shows nationalism to be a dynamic and open-ended historical force, one that eludes a clear sense of historical closure.
To whom would you recommend this book?
Social scientists interested in the origins of the nationalist conflict in the Balkans.
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict
Say Nothing. A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
by Patrick Radden Keefe
The book starts with one of the most notorious abductions and murders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, that of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 children.
Say nothing
It links her murder with the life of Dolours Price, a Republican activist in the Provisional IRA. One of the clearest accounts of what conflict does to ordinary people and the almost impossibility of living outside a civil war raging around you.
To whom would you recommend this book?
Students of conflict, especially in the context of gender in conflict.
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict
by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan
This book combines statistical analysis, case studies and theoretical argument to make an exceptionally strong case for the effectiveness of civil vs armed resistance.
Why civil resistance works
Did this book influence your current or past work? How?
It provided sophisticated reinforcement for views to which I already inclined.
To whom would you recommend this book?
People interested in resistance movements.
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