Stephen Farrell – författare

This book aims to demonstrate how differing ways of imagining the body generate diverse stories of history, gender, politics, and, ultimately, the literature of who we are. VAS combines a variety of voices, from journalism and libretto to poem and comic book. Often these voices meet in counterpoint, and the meaning of the narrative emerges from their juxtapositions, harmonies, or discords. Using a wide and historical sweep of representations of the body - from pedigree charts to genetic sequences - VAS is, finally, the story of finding one's identity within the double helix of language and lineage.

Declared a terrorist menace yet elected to government in a free election, Hamas now stands as the most important Sunni Islamist group in the Middle East.

How did Hamas grow to be so powerful? Who supports it? What is its future? This essential insight into Hamas answers these questions.

Milton-Edwards and Farrell have between them spent decades researching and reporting from the heartlands of the Hamas movement and gained unrivalled access to the world of Islamic resistance and radical Islam in its potent Palestinian form.

Drawing on their frontline experiences of recent events, their access to secret documents from the western intelligence community and interviews with leaders, militants, and commanders of Hamas'' armed battalions, they reveal the full story of Hamas and the future of political Islam in the Middle East.

Milton-Edwards and Farrell show Hamas to be a broad and thus more powerful regional phenomenon than previously thought, and by doing so contend that it is now time to rethink the war and the nature of Islam and its role in the Middle East.

Beverley Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queens University, Belfast. She is the author of books such as Contemporary Politics in the Middle East (2006) and The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a People''s War (2009). Prize-winning journalist Stephen Farrell is Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times and was previously Middle East correspondent for The Times.

Declared a terrorist menace yet voted into government in a free election, Hamas then used its Gaza power base to launch cross-border attacks that scorched Israel and transformed the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How did a small Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood grow to challenge long-established rivals such as the PLO? Who supports Hamas and what is its agenda? How powerful has it become and how strong will it remain?With decades of combined experience researching and reporting from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jerusalem, and around the Middle East, Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell gained unrivalled access to Hamas. Drawing on years of frontline reporting and interviews with members of the group’s founding generation and their successors who now lead it, they trace Hamas’ path to the shocking attacks of 07 October 2023 and their devastating aftermath.  Its critics believe Hamas must be ousted to reach a solution to the Middle East conflict. Hamas’s supporters believe it is the solution. Nobody now believes it can be ignored.Based on their landmark 2010 study which has been thoroughly revised and updated, this book brings the story of Hamas up to the present and will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East today.Also available as an audiobook.

Declared a terrorist menace yet voted into government in a free election, Hamas then used its Gaza power base to launch cross-border attacks that scorched Israel and transformed the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How did a small Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood grow to challenge long-established rivals such as the PLO? Who supports Hamas and what is its agenda? How powerful has it become and how strong will it remain?With decades of combined experience researching and reporting from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jerusalem, and around the Middle East, Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell gained unrivalled access to Hamas. Drawing on years of frontline reporting and interviews with members of the group’s founding generation and their successors who now lead it, they trace Hamas’ path to the shocking attacks of 07 October 2023 and their devastating aftermath.  Its critics believe Hamas must be ousted to reach a solution to the Middle East conflict. Hamas’s supporters believe it is the solution. Nobody now believes it can be ignored.Based on their landmark 2010 study which has been thoroughly revised and updated, this book brings the story of Hamas up to the present and will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East today.Also available as an audiobook.

Declared a terrorist menace yet voted into government in a free election, Hamas then used its Gaza power base to launch cross-border attacks that scorched Israel and transformed the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How did a small Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood grow to challenge long-established rivals such as the PLO? Who supports Hamas and what is its agenda? How powerful has it become and how strong will it remain?

With decades of combined experience researching and reporting from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jerusalem, and around the Middle East, Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell gained unrivalled access to Hamas. Drawing on years of frontline reporting and interviews with members of the group’s founding generation and their successors who now lead it, they trace Hamas’ path to the shocking attacks of 07 October 2023 and their devastating aftermath.  Its critics believe Hamas must be ousted to reach a solution to the Middle East conflict. Hamas’s supporters believe it is the solution. Nobody now believes it can be ignored.

Based on their landmark 2010 study which has been thoroughly revised and updated, this book brings the story of Hamas up to the present and will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East today.

Also available as an audiobook.