Alumni Work Among The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2020

The New York Times has published the 100 Notable Books of 2020 and has included Kim Ghattas’ most recent book “Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry that Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East” (Henry Holt and Company, 2020) to their nonfiction selection. Ghattas worked on this book in 2017 while a Public Policy Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. Her expertise extends to international affairs and foreign policies, specializing in Middle East affairs.

Black Wave provides extensive historical research to dispel accepted truths of the regions Ghattas calls home. Ghattas explores how Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, once allies and twin pillars of US strategy in the region, became mortal enemies after 1979. She shows how they used and distorted religion in a competition that went well beyond geopolitics. Feeding intolerance, suppressing cultural expression, and encouraging sectarian violence from Egypt to Pakistan, the war for cultural supremacy led to Iran’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, the assassination of countless intellectuals, the birth of groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the rise of ISIS. Black Wave is both an intimate and sweeping history of the region and will significantly alter perceptions of the Middle East.