Kirjahaku

This book investigates the reportage of the 2004 Beslan hostage-taking published by three very different Russian-language websites: RIA-Novosti, Kavkazcenter, and Caucasian Knot, tracking the ways in which these three sites constructed six different reports in response to what happened at Beslan, even as events were still taking place. By covering both Russian and English reports, the book also considers ways in which translation impacts on the reconstruction of these narratives. Working from the premises that narratives constitute reality and are fundamental to human agency, the book investigates material never before subjected to scholarly analysis in this depth, contributing to an understanding of Beslan in terms of its significance for Russia’s nation building, civil society and responses to terrorism. The book also reflects on the role of narratives in perpetuating or dissolving violent political conflict, a discussion relevant not just for Russia, but for other, seemingly intractable, conflicts across the world.

This book retrieves from the archives people, places and perspectives normally overlooked to tell an original and expansive history of the Qatar Peninsula, paying close attention to landscape and the natural world. The arc of the book moves geographically through the landscape and chronologically through selected sources, drawing on digitised maps, manuscripts, hydrographic surveys, government records, traveller accounts, early photographs, archaeological and ethnographic reports. While these are standard sources recruited by Qatar to tell its own singular, streamlined history, this book is a subversive reading of those sources. It braids together elusive and precarious stories – difficult to find, at risk of being lost, and never before brought together into a single volume – to write a more complicated story of place. Through them, we can reimagine a place that, like many in the world, works hard to control a limited set of stories about itself. Readers who know something about Qatarwill be surprised by the book’s nuances and details. Readers who know little or nothing will be drawn in to discover that, even in the most out-of-the-way and inhospitable places, deserts are never empty.

This book retrieves from the archives people, places and perspectives normally overlooked to tell an original and expansive history of the Qatar Peninsula, paying close attention to landscape and the natural world. The arc of the book moves geographically through the landscape and chronologically through selected sources, drawing on digitised maps, manuscripts, hydrographic surveys, government records, traveller accounts, early photographs, archaeological and ethnographic reports. While these are standard sources recruited by Qatar to tell its own singular, streamlined history, this book is a subversive reading of those sources. It braids together elusive and precarious stories – difficult to find, at risk of being lost, and never before brought together into a single volume – to write a more complicated story of place. Through them, we can reimagine a place that, like many in the world, works hard to control a limited set of stories about itself. Readers who know something about Qatarwill be surprised by the book’s nuances and details. Readers who know little or nothing will be drawn in to discover that, even in the most out-of-the-way and inhospitable places, deserts are never empty.