Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World

Based largely on the author's New Yorker assignments in recent years, this book offers an informative and engaging, if limited, portrait of the Arab world. Viorst's mosaic of observations on Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and the Palestinians are spiced with effective interviews with officials, experts and village folk; Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz is an especially good guide to ``the hidden dynamics'' of his country. Two crises--the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Gulf War--overlay Viorst's reportage. Gulf War jingoists would be well-advised to read his depiction of Kuwait transformed by easy living, an Iraq which had legitimate grievances and a postwar Kurdish uprising far more complex than headline brutalities. Having spent much of the past year in Gaza and the West Bank, he also updated the book with a lengthy chapter on what the Palestinian-Israeli agreement of September 13, 1993 will mean to those areas. While Viorst certainly supports his conclusion that Arab states are ``as fragile as sandcastles,'' his avoidance of North Africa, and his lack of original Arabic source material limit his authority. (Feb.)