State of Emergency (eBook)

Navid Kermani is a writer and scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. He has received numerous accolades for his literary and academic work, including the 2015 Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association, Germany's most prestigious cultural award.

Editorial Note

Cairo, December 2006

Paradise in a State of Emergency
Kashmir, October 2007

Houseboat 1

In the City

Houseboat 2

Politicians 1-4

Night

Houseboat 3

The Shrine

Houseboat 4

In the Countryside

Houseboat 5

The Mother

Houseboat 6

Ahad Baba

In Kashmir, Far Away from Kashmir

Landless
Between Agra and Delhi, September 2007

Lumpenproletariat in Formation

Why Complain?

They Want Land

Expulsion as Industrial Development Policy

The Sky and the Ground

Ram Paydiri Doesn't Understand

The Laboratory
Gujarat, October 2007

An Idol

On the Rubbish Tip

Into the Centre

Social Praxis

India's Future

Where Even the Atheists Pray

The Pit

A Visit to the Sufis
Pakistan, February 2012

Rhythm of God

War Against Themselves

The Lovers' Tomb

O Papa, Protect Me

In the Mansion District

The Poor People's Peace

Quiet, Cleanliness and Order

The Feast

The Cosmic Order

Bleak Normality
Afghanistan I, December 2006

People Don't Change Much

Really Crazy

Two British Commanders

Humanitarian Mission

In Kabul

Where Is the Progress?

Master Tamim

The New Motorway

American Headquarters

Visit to the Passport Office

Cola in the Dark

The Limits of Reporting
Afghanistan II, September 11, 2011

Cemetery 1

Walls in Front of Walls

Northward

Mazar-e Sharif

The Best Place in Town

In the Countryside

In the Panjshir Valley

In the South

Peace Conference

Tribal Leaders 1

Kandahar

Tribal Leaders 2

The Limits of Reporting

Cemetery 2

The Uprising
Tehran, June 2009

Chance Companions

Arrival

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Back to Saturday

Sunday

Early Monday

When You See the Black Flags
Iraq, September 2014

I. Najaf: In the Heart of the Shia

Ubiquity of Death

A Dangerous Topic

A Different Shia

With Swordlike Index Finger

Grand Ayatollah Sistani's Message

II. Baghdad: The Future Is Past

A Thirty Years' War and More

A Hookah with Goethe and Hölderlin

Fog of Melancholy

Right Out of Ali Baba

The Last Christian

A Warrior

III. Kurdistan: The War for Our World Too

Literally Overnight

What For?

To the Front

The General

The Entrance to Hell
Syria, September 2012

The Centre and the Margins

Artists of the Revolution

Two Views

Outsourcing Terror

The Feast of St Elian

At the Tomb of Ibn Arabi

Thinking without Gradations

The Intensive Care Unit

Those Who Can Read, Let Them Read

We Too Love Life
Palestine, April 2005

In Search of Palestine

Without Hope

The Wall Against Empathy

My Capitulation

They Are Human Beings

Life as What It Is
Lampedusa, September 2008

Sunday Outing

Ghosts

Midnight

The Previous Mayor

The Camp

The New Mayor

Night Again

With or Without Approval
Cairo, October 2012

"Those who want to see the day-to-day lives of human beings in the crisis regions of the Middle East - lives that don't make the news - should read Navid Kermani's sensitive reporting. Reports you won't soon forget."
--Deutschland-Radio

"Kermani's well-researched and sensitive book reveals how violence is born. It also reminds us that far away victims and perpetrators have one thing in common: they're human beings, just like us."
--Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Intense, colourful, emotional, subjective."
--Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

"Among the most thoughtful intellectual voices in Germany today."
--The New York Review of Books

"After reading this book, one puts it down glad to have been both touched and taught"
--Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag

"Kermani's style is nuanced and kindly, poetic and philosophical, he zooms in and out of perspectives like a novelist and is drawn to irresolvable tensions like a conceptual artist... State of Emergency is a humane and timely reminder that there is no one Islam, no one set of Islamic views, values and beliefs, just as there is no one Western creed."
--Geographical