front cover of Kipling
Kipling
Jad Adams
Haus Publishing, 2005
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was the greatest writer in a Britain that ruled the largest empire the world has known, yet he was always a controversial figure, as deeply hated as he was loved. This accessible biography aims at an understanding of the man behind the image and gives an explanation of his enduring popularity
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Pankhurst
Jad Adams
Haus Publishing, 2003
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) was a leading suffragette and founder in 1903 of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). She was incensed by the refusal of the Independent Labour Party to admit women. In reaction she founded the all-female WSPU. Both Emmeline and her daughter Christabel were imprisoned many times for the political stance and militancy, with which they fought for the women’s right to vote. Her battle-cry, ‘remove the political disability of sex’, is as relevant today as it was explosive then.
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The Dictatorship Syndrome
Alaa Al Aswany
Haus Publishing, 2019
The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.
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Palermo
Roberto Alajmo
Haus Publishing, 2017
Palermo’s heart lies hidden under its many outer layers. In this unusual guide to the beautiful Sicilian capital, Roberto Alajmo uncovers each stratum to reveal its true character. Although disguised as a tourist’s handbook, Palermo has much more to offer than ordinary recommendations for the intrepid traveler—it gives an insight into the city from a lifelong resident’s point of view, showcasing its hidden cultural and culinary jewels; portraying its people and their secrets; touching on its politics and contentious mafia involvement. Seeing Palermo with one’s own eyes is an ineffable experience, even for Alajmo; the essence of the city, its beauty, is the only aspect left to the reader to discover.
 
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Nasser
Anne Alexander
Haus Publishing, 2007
One of the young officers who overthrew King Farouq in 1952, Nasser was 36 years old when he became the undisputed leader of Egypt. In 1956 he nationalised the Suez Canal, braving the anger of Britain, France and war with Israel.
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Piip, Meierovics & Voldemaras
The Baltic States
Charlotte Alston
Haus Publishing, 2010
Conflict on the borders of the Russian 'Empire', whatever the complexion of the government controlling it, has been a constant feature of the past 90 years, most recently with Russia's brief war with Georgia in August 2008. In 1919, as the smaller nations on Russia's borders sought self-determination while the Civil War raged between the Whites and the Bolsheviks, the Paris Peace Conference struggled with a situation complicated by mutually exclusive aims. The Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were seen by both the Russians and the Western Allies as a protective buffer for their own territory, which led to the curious situation that the Peace Conference requested German troops to remain temporarily in the Baltic territory they had occupied during the First World War to block the westward spread of the Bolshevik Revolution. The ongoing civil war in Russia further complicated the issue, because if the Whites should win and restore the 'legitimate' Russian government, the Peace Conference could not divide up the territory of a power that had been one of the original members of the Entente. The US politician Herbert Hoover described Russia as 'Banquo's ghost' at the Paris Peace Conference, an invisible but influential presence, and nowhere can this be more clearly seen than in the deliberations over the Baltic States.
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Self and Society
Are Communal Solidarity and Individual Freedom Allies or Antagonists?
Michael Amherst
Haus Publishing, 2021
A collection of five essays from the 2020 Hubert Butler Essay Prize that examine contemporary society, featuring a foreword from Irish President Michael D. Higgins.

Bringing together the winning and shortlisted essays from the 2020 Hubert Butler Essay Prize, Self and Society presents five fresh perspectives on the tension between individual freedom and communal solidarity, asking what we owe our communities and why it matters. With a foreword by Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins, the book examines themes that are more pressing than ever in the age of Coronavirus and Brexit, invoking the spirit of the Irish essayist Hubert Butler to investigate whether collective and personal aims can be synergistic or are destined to remain ever in conflict.
 
Winner Michael Amherst takes on identity politics, questioning whether the stratification of society in the name of social justice is helpful or harmful in the pursuit of equality. Runners-up Tara McEvoy and David Crane tackle, respectively, the necessity of collective action as a response to the current pandemic and other social crises, and the role of conflicts of individual freedom in facilitating or stifling the economic liberation of refugees. Special mentions have been awarded to Nick Inman and Beninio McDonough-Tranza for their respective essays on personal responsibility and the legacy of the Polish union Solidarnosc.
 
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These Islands
A Letter to Britain
Ali M. Ansari
Haus Publishing, 2018
Following Brexit and the earlier referendum on Scottish independence, the debate about British identity has been given recent new prominence. Historically conceived to integrate conflicting nationalisms in an “ever more perfect union,” Britain has lately succumbed to particular resurgent nationalisms in a curious reversal of fortune.

With These Islands, Ali M. Ansari considers the idea of Britain as a political entity. This idea of Britain considers some nationalists as suppressed minorities in need of attention, and others as bigoted throwbacks to a more divisive age. Arguing the case for Great Britain from the perspective of the political mythology of the British state—with an emphasis on culture, ideas and narrative constructions—Ansari makes the claim that Britain’s strength lies in its ability to shape the popular imagination, both at home and abroad. He concludes that an “excess of enthusiasm” may yet do untold damage to the fabric of a state and society that has been carefully constructed over the centuries and may not be easily repaired.
 
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Simone de Beauvoir
Lisa Appignanesi
Haus Publishing, 2019
Simone de Beauvoir was a member of the intellectual elite of philosopher-writers whose feminist ideas revolutionised conventional thinking. She is known primarily for her monumental work: The Second Sex, (1949) a scholarly and passionate seminal work, which became a classic of feminist literature but also for her partnership with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, France's most celebrated and unconventional intellectual couplings.
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African Exodus
Migration and the Future of Europe
Asfa-Wossen Asserate
Haus Publishing, 2018
In 2015, an unprecedented number of people from Africa and the Near East took flight and sought refuge in Europe. By the end of that year, some 1.8 million migrants had arrived in the EU, the vast majority having come across the Mediterranean. Since then, despite measures to host some of the people fleeing the Syrian war in Turkey and concurrent attempts to physically seal off some borders in Eastern Europe, the numbers of refugees traveling to Europe has continued to top half a million annually.  A mass migration on a scale not witnessed in modern times is underway, and it has presented Europe with its greatest challenge of the twenty-first century.

Asfa-Wossen Asserate argues here that building higher fences or finding more effective methods of integration will only, in the long term, perpetuate rather than solve the problems associated with these large numbers of displaced refugees. We need to realize that we are only treating the symptoms of an oncoming catastrophe and that, if we are to respond to mass migration, we will ultimately have to understand its causes. African Exodus places its emphasis firmly on the causes of the refugee crisis, which are to be found not least in Europe itself, and charts ways in which we might deal with it effectively in the long term.

In the course of this analysis, Asserate asks why our view of Africa—a troubled continent, but rich in so many ways—is so distorted. How can we combat the corrupt, authoritarian regimes that stymie progress and development? Why are millions fleeing to Europe? How is the EU complicit in the migration crisis? And finally, in practical terms: what can be done, and what prospects does the future hold?
 
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King of Kings
The Triumph and Tragedy of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Asfa-Wossen Asserate
Haus Publishing, 2015
Haile Selassie I, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was as brilliant as he was formidable. An early proponent of African unity and independence who claimed to be a descendant of King Solomon, he fought with the Allies against the Axis powers during World War II and was a messianic figure for the Jamaican Rastafarians. But the final years of his empire saw turmoil and revolution, and he was ultimately overthrown and assassinated in a communist coup.

Written by Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haile Selassie’s grandnephew, this is the first major biography of this final “king of kings.” Asserate, who spent his childhood and adolescence in Ethiopia before fleeing the revolution of 1974, knew Selassie personally and gained intimate insights into life at the imperial court. Introducing him as a reformer and an autocrat whose personal history—with all of its upheavals, promises, and horrors—reflects in many ways the history of the twentieth century itself, Asserate uses his own experiences and painstaking research in family and public archives to achieve a colorful and even-handed portrait of the emperor.
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Ascension to Death
Mamdouh Azzam
Haus Publishing, 2009
Ascension to Death is the first work of acclaimed Syrian writer Mamdouh Azzam to be published in English. Set against the backdrop of a conservative Druze region of southern Syria, this is the tragic story of the orphan Salma, who falls in love with a boy from her village but is then forced into an arranged marriage.

The controller of Salma’s fate is her tyrannical uncle, who, as her guardian and a powerful community leader with governmental ties, is all too pleased to unload the burden of his brother’s daughter onto the first man to propose. As Salma desperately tries to escape the marriage, the novel follows her attempt to flee with her lover. But after her family colludes with the authorities against her, Salma finds herself trapped in a nightmarish ordeal of imprisonment, torture, and abandonment.

One of the most beloved Syrian novels of our time, Ascension to Death is a dark, inventive, and unflinchingly honest look at both the best and the worst to be found in human nature and our modern world.
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