The first study of Anglophone and Italian novels by Somali diasporic authors, offering a new critical framework for multilingual and transnational analysis of Somali literature. Building on the latest scholarship about multilingual contexts, diaspora studies and the rapidly expanding field of Italian postcolonial studies, Marco Medugno examines Somali diasporic literature with a comparative perspective. Considering works written in English and Italian, he argues that Somali diasporic authors share similar themes and aesthetics, thus creating an interliterary community within the diaspora space. By using multilingualism as a starting point, Medugno provides significant insights into how Somali national and individual identities are constructed in diasporic, global contexts through geography, style, form, language and the re-writing of national histories emerging out of colonization and independence. Analysing acclaimed Somali novels such as Nuruddin Farah's Links and Crossbones, Igiaba Scego's Adua and Cristina Ali Farah's Little Mother, he questions any definition of 'local' as 'provincial', instead considering it a site for interrogating global concerns. Literature of the Somali Diaspora is organized around three themes: spatiality, language and resistance help to contextualize authors, forced by the decades-long Somali Civil War, to write outside Somalia and in different languages – including Somali, Italian, English, German, Dutch and Arabic – within global literary circuits. Their work thus creates a literature not confined within national borders but an interliterary global community, a transnational and multilingual space in which they share world aesthetic ideologies, challenge and engage with literary traditions in different languages and show an interplay between diverse cultures.

The articles in this book are the result of the First Linguistics Workshop: Somali Language and Literature at the Hargeysa Cultural Centre in December 2015. The objective of the workshop was to facilitate the sharing of current work among scholars in the field of Somali language studies through presentation of their ongoing projects. This also allowed current work to be opened to a wider audience and for students, journalists and writers to hear about some of the issues which are of current interest in Somali language studies. There was a deliberate attempt to draw people engaged in both more strictly linguistic matters together with those whose interests are more as practitioners with language, such as local writers and journalists, and also to include those whose primary focus is literature. This led to a diverse range of both presentations and opinions on those presentations, which is represented also in this volume. The views on any matter are those of the individual authors and readers are left to determine for themselves to what extent they agree or disagree with points made. The more strictly linguistic papers include presentations on aspects of Somali phonology, morphology and syntax. Sociolinguistics is also represented as is recent work on lexicography and the use of information technology in Somali language studies. There are two papers which consider literature from different perspectives.

"Enderby, poet and social critic, comrade and Catholic, is endlessly hounded by women, but always emerges triumphant." --Publisher.

Gradually since 2003, Turkey's autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to make Turkey a great power -- in the tradition of past Turkish leaders from the late Ottoman sultans to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Here the leading authority Soner Cagaptay, author of The New Sultan -- the first biography of President Erdogan -- provides a masterful overview of the power politics in the Middle East and Turkey's place in it. Erdogan has picked an unorthodox model in the context of recent Turkish history, attempting to cast his country as a stand-alone Middle Eastern power. In doing so Turkey has broken ranks with its traditional Western allies, including the United States and has embraced an imperial-style foreign policy which has aimed to restore Turkey's Ottoman-era reach into the Arabian Middle East and the Balkans. Today, in addition to a domestic crackdown on dissent and journalistic freedoms, driven by Erdogan's style of governance, Turkey faces a hostile world. Ankara has nearly no friends left in the Middle East, and it faces a threat from resurgent historic adversaries: Russia and Iran. Furthermore, Turkey cannot rely on the unconditional support of its traditional Western allies. Can Erdogan deliver Turkey back to safety? What are the risks that lie ahead for him, and his country? How can Turkey truly become a great power, fulfilling a dream shared by many Turks, the sultans, Ataturk, and Erdogan himself?

Challenges the nationalist and Zionist hegemony by discussing the hidden history of Communist and bi-national movements in Israel.

With a new Introduction by Said S. Samatar and an Afterword by the author