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Gamal Abdel Nasser

What the Stabbing of a Nobel Prize-Winning Novelist Tells Us About Power in Egypt

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.

How a Now-Forgotten Assassination Almost Toppled Jordan’s Monarchy

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.