Saqi Books

The 'raging frenzy' of the sex drive has always defied control, yet thousands of years of civilization have tried to do so, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two and the harmless fun of one time...

London's Overthrow is a potent polemic describing the capital in a time of austerity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Award-winning author and essayist China Mieville cuts through the hyperbole of our politicians to present a view from ordinary London - of the inequality, oppression and indignity and the hidden, subversive sentiment...

Who was the Jewish peasant who, two thousand years ago, walked across what is now Palestine to gather followers with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God? Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his...

Insightful and extensively researched, "Lebanon in the 1950s" explores the differing mythologies of the Maronite, Druze and Sunni communities that led to a brief but brutal clash in Lebanon in 1958. This quickly escalated into a full-blown national crisis, which saw US Marines landing on Beirut shores. This polemical and thought-provoking work...

In 1964 Faisal bin Abdul Aziz became king of a country holding a quarter of the world's oil reserves, also home to Mecca and Medina. He was called 'the most powerful Arab ruler in centuries'. Eleven years later, in front of television cameras, his nephew shot him in the head at point-blank range. Alexei Vassiliev tells the story of a pious,...