276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Dictator's Wife: The gripping BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick

£8.495£16.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

A recent report by a former employee of the American embassy in Damascus labelled Tarif Akhras, Asma’s cousin, as “one of the regime’s most prominent economic figures”.

Freya Berry - Watson Little

With its rugged landscape and archaeological riches, Asma reckoned Syria ought to be a desirable tourism destination. Bashar’s mother insisted on retaining the title “First Lady”; state media referred to Asma as akilatu al-rais, the president’s spouse. It’s this bitter tooth-and-nail fight for survival while also maintaining serene perfection and femininity,” she says.Nazarbayev’s government has been accused of a wide array of human rights abuses, including pervasive corruption, limits on freedom of speech and political will, as well as violence against women. Though many of Asma’s friends distanced themselves from her years ago, they remain concerned about her well-being. Nicolae refused to share power with her and Elena's gender and lack of education barred her from true political ascendancy within the Party. The end of Elena In only a matter of days, Elena transformed from one of the most prestigious scientists in Europe to a state criminal facing a firing squad. In 1997, her work actually earned her the Ihsan Doğramacı Family Health Foundation Prize, from the World Health Organization.

The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry | Theresa Book Review: The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry | Theresa

His defenders point out that for decades he has lived in the same, modest semi-detached house near a busy motorway in west London: weeds wriggle through the paving stones in the front garden; the paint on the porch is peeling. Asma’s parents had grown up in the city; now protests there were escalating into armed insurrection.use it once, there’d be an outcry, but not to the point of international intervention,” said the diplomat. The mesmerised narrator wonders aloud about the impact of these women, raising issues not too detached from ones we might ask about our own, real-life dictators’ wives.

Dictators From Around the World - TheClever Women Who Married Dictators From Around the World - TheClever

More counterintuitively during our 50-minute conversation, the author also name-checks US first ladies Jill Biden, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump as inspirations – a cast that implies the dynamics of power, performance and sexism at issue in The Dictator’s Wife are not as unique to autocracies as the west would like to tell itself. During this period, the world was a blood bath, experiencing two world wars, the holocaust, and the uprising of military dictators, who between them caused over 100 million deaths. When the family gathered for meals they made a point of conversing in their impenetrable Alawite patois.The military and the sect will conspire to stop her standing as president,” said a well-connected Syrian trader in Dubai. Bashar’s distaste for blood led him to specialise in ophthalmology, one of the less prestigious medical disciplines. She showed her disgust and vehement anti-semitism by claiming that she had to accept a "low-ranked" degree from the hands of a "dirty Jew," Dr. The petitions were turned down and Elena had to settle for an honorary degree from the Central London Polytechnic and an honorary fellowship from the Royal Institute of Chemistry. France prised the country from the Ottomans, and its rule between the world wars was brief and resented.

Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad Banker, princess, warlord: the many lives of Asma Assad

So I did feel an unnerving amount of sympathy, which you have to as a novelist: you can’t just go in with that hardheaded, judgmental approach. A new railway line was planned to connect Damascus to the ancient Assyrian cities in the underdeveloped north-east. But even UN veterans were shocked by the degree to which the institution co-operated with Syrian government organisations.We were told: no paper can be written or published, no conference delivered without Elena Ceausecu's name appearing in first place. To others, she was a sphinx-like enabler whose silence was violence: every time she appeared at Trump’s side, she was normalising his assault on democracy. During his reign of fear the security services ran informant networks, tapped phones and tortured people indiscriminately. She had toyed with charity work early in her marriage, and now sought to unify her projects within a single organisation, the Syria Trust for Development. Asma Assad has certainly come a long way from the pebble-dash, semi-detached house in London where she was raised.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment