Full of Machiavellian intrigue and searing political satire, Variations on Night and Day, the final volume of Munif's landmark Cities of Salt trilogy, chronicles the creation of a Persian Gulf nation by a corrupt Arab monarch and conniving British empire builders.

"Full of Machiavellian intrigue and searing political satire, the final volume of Abdelrahman Munif's landmark Cities of Salt trilogy - "the only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans, and local oligarchy on a Gulf country" (Edward Said) - chronicles the creation of a fictional Persian Gulf nation through the machinations of a corrupt Arab monarch and conniving British empire builders." "Set in the 1930s, Variations on Night and Day depicts the rise to power of Sultan Khureybit and the emergence of Mooran as a modern nation. Khureybit expands and consolidates his dominion, crushing rival clans by military force and internal opposition with bribes, guile, and assassinations - all in the name of holy war - even as he is being sponsored by the British government, which plays rival sultans off one another to secure its influence in the region. Against this setting we see as well the venality of the Sultan's polygamous household, in which his several wives vie for preeminence through gossip, chicanery, and murder."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Spell-binding evocation of Bedouin life in the 1930s when oil is discovered by Americans in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom.

From one of the most highly regarded writers of Arabic literature, Trench is the second volume in the epic quintet Cities of Salt. Tracing the economic history of the Arabic world, Munif picks up where Vol. I left off, with the effects of the discovery of oil reserves in the region beginning to show their true colors. Following The Doctor as he is invited by the Sultan of Harran, the character watches as the royalty succumbs to corruption and greed, and in turn, the political and natural destruction of his homeland. Praise for Trench “Munif’s wonderful novel is a welcome corrective. . . . [It] deepens, enriches and above all humanizes whatever sense of Arab culture we may have.”—The New York Times Book Review “[T]his sly, patient dissection of a sultanate grown too rich for its own survival makes it clear why the author lost his own Saudi citizenship.”—Kirkus Reviews