The Inner Sea: The Mediterranean and Its People - Softcover

For the early Arab cartographers it was the inner sea, and few seas have had such inner appeal to the imagination as the Mediterranean. Today a new Mediterraean is emerging, its tastes and habits now almost universal, from clothes to cookery, politics, design and organized crime - kebabs and cafe expresso, mohair suits, magic and mullahs. The sea and its people are now seeing the most dramatic changes in their history. Who are the new Mediterraneans? How do they see themselves and their future, and how will their world change ours? Robert Fox explores these questions in a journey to every country of the inner sea and the great islands scattered across its waters. In the past five years he has seen the mountains of Morocco, the deserts of Syria, and sylvan wasteland of Albania, the monasteries of Athos, the slums of Naples, Gaza in riot, Beirut in civil war, Cairo in celebration. He discovers each country and people as they see themselves, shares the lives and thoughts of poets and politicians, popes and peasants, bishops, brigands and barons. The Mediterranean is a world in fermentation, argues Robert Fox, and his journey records the signs of dramatic changes to come, the growth of populations in the south, the shift in climate, the revival of old religions in more fanatical form. The Mediterranean will hold threats and promises far beyond its own confines.