<DIV><P>Voted one of the Top 25 Books of 1999 by the <I>Village Voice.</I></P><p>"An outstanding anthology of essays surveying the complexities of Mediterranean cultures; the diverse, changing space of the Balkans, Middle East, and North Africa—areas of diasporas, dislocations, and genocidal exterminations provoked by nationalism and religious fanaticism. Of special interest are his observations and analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian confrontation, Arab/Jewish poetics, and Jewish identity in America."—<I>Midwest Book Review</I></P><P> <B>Table of Contents</B><P> Local Politics: The Background as Foreword Ammiel Alcalay<br> Acknowledgments<br> Five Hundred Years After: What Was Left Unsaid about Sepharad<br> Juan Goytisolo<p> PRELUDES: AN OPENING<br> weighing the losses, like stones in your hand'<br> Atonement<p> OF BOOKS AND CITIES/ THE JOURNEY<br> My Mediterranean<br> The Quill's Embroidery: Untangling a Tradition<br> The Quill's Embroidery: Poetry, Tradition, and the Postmodern'<br> Paris / New York / Jerusalem: The Unscheduled Flight of Edmond Jabes and Jacques Derrida<br> Perplexity Index<br> Desert Solitaire: On Edmond Jabes<br> For Edouard Roditi<br> Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs<p> FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES, PROMISED LANDS<br> On Arabesques<br> After the Last Sky<br> Who's Afraid of Mahmoud Darwish?<br> Israel and the Levant: Wounded Kinship's Last Resort'<br> Forbidden Territory, Promised Lands<br> In True Colors<br> Culture without a Country<br> Too Much Past<br> The State of the Gulf: Abdelrahman Munif and Hanan al-Shaykh<br> Our Memory Has No Future: On Etel Adnan<br> The war was ending, the diasporas beginning'<p> DISPATCHES<br> A Stitch in Time<br> Court Report: Prolonging a Farce<br> The Trial: A Real Farce<br> Ay, de mi aljama': Palestinians and Israelis Meet, in Spain!<br> Israel / Palestine 101: A Letter to Robert Creeley<br> Quality Control<br> Ushering in the New Order: Repercussions from the Gulf War Reflections at the End of 1992<br> Why Israel?<p> THE RETURN: VARIATIONS ON A THEME<br> Understanding Revolution<br> Exploding Identities: Notes on Ethnicity and Literary History<br> Speaking with Forked Tongues, or Parables of Eq</DIV>