Gamal Abdel Nasser

To Kill a Novelist
The attempted assassination of the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz is remembered as a story of Islamist extremism. Yet the original controversy sparked by his work, particularly “Children of the Alley,” was more to do with his powerful political vision than his views on religion.

Amman of Violence
A 1960 bombing that killed Jordanian Prime Minister Hazzaa al-Majali and 10 others nearly claimed the life of the young King Hussein himself. The unprecedented attack, which the monarch dubbed the “worst outrage in the history of Jordan,” was part of a broader turn across the Arab world toward darker and deadlier political norms.