MBS von Ben Hubbard
The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman

Kategorie: Bücher
Seiten / Format: 384 S
Erscheinungsjahr: 2021
Verlag: Penguin Random HouseCrown
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN: 9781984823830

Brilliant . . . clear and convincing . . . a detailed and disturbing portrait of Saudi Arabia s crown prince . . . The book s strength is the thoroughness of its reporting.Christopher Dickey,The New York Times Book Review<br><br>Riveting. . . . fascinating. . . . a fine example of talented and dogged reporting . . . an impressively well-sourced work . . . Ben Hubbard s thoroughly researched study of the Saudi crown prince is full of chilling detail.The Guardian<br><br>In this engaging account, Ben Hubbard shows both sides of the story, bringing his narrative alive with a host of insights, conversations, anecdotes and details.Financial Times<br><br>Saudi Arabia is testing the extremes of tradition and innovation, of half-baked visions and intensifying repression. Ben Hubbard s authoritative reporting on the inner sanctums of its society offers a perfect synthesis of journalism and area expertise: the best description we have at the moment of why things happen as they do in the kingdom.Robert D. Kaplan, author ofThe Return of Marco Polo s World<br><br>A devastating profile of the Saudi prince who rose rapidly to become one of the Middle East s most powerful players and one of the world s most ruthless leaders . . . Ben Hubbard has provided a chilling and occasionally horrifying portrait of a man known worldwide simply by his initials: MBS. It s a captivating read.Robin Wright, author ofRock the Casbah<br><br>An elegant writer, the multilingual veteran Middle East correspondent Ben Hubbard is exactly the right person to draw this portrait of the most important leader in that part of the world today. His fast-paced narrative never flags or avoids dark corners. I found it riveting.Adam Hochschild, author ofKing Leopold s Ghost<br><br>Can we trust this mysterious prince with our oil supplies, with our friendship with the prospects of peace in the Middle East? If anyone can give us the answers to these life-and-death questions, it is the brilliant and compulsively readable Ben Hubbard.Robert Lacey, author ofThe KingdomandInside the Kingdom<br><br>Is Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a modernizer or a murderer? Through dogged research and a remarkable ability to navigate the labyrinth that is Saudi society, Hubbard makes clear the answer is both.MBSis a devastating portrait of the young and increasingly despotic prince whom President Trump calls a very great friend. . . . Essential reading.Scott Anderson, author ofLawrence in Arabia<br><br>Excellent . . . gripping . . . compelling . . . an accessible biography that does not stray into sensationalism but helps make sense of all the recent headlines around the impulsive and, one could argue, dangerous young prince.Kim Ghattas,New Statesman<br><br>Here s a biography of MBS by a brilliant journalist whom he hasn t managed to muzzle.Nicholas Kristof<br> <br>An excellent account of the life and the background of the most consequential new figure in the Middle East in our time. . . . It s a frightening picture.Bruce Riedel, LawfareChapter 1<br><br>The Kingdom<br><br>In 1996, a British-Algerian man teaching at an elite school in Jeddah on Saudi Arabia s west coast got a unique job offer. A prince named Salman bin Abdulaziz was coming to town for a few months with one of his wives and her children, and the family was looking for an English tutor.<br><br>The teacher, Rachid Sekkai, knew a bit about Prince Salman. He was the governor of Riyadh Province, which put him in charge of the Saudi capital, and he was a son of the king who had founded Saudi Arabia, granting him high status among the thousands of princes and princesses who made up the royal family. The job sounded interesting, and would probably pay well, so Sekkai accepted, and for the next few months a chauffeur picked him up from school at the end of the workday and drove him to the royal compound where Salman and his family were staying.<br><br>Entering for the first time, Sekkai saw a series of jaw-dropping villas with immaculate gardens maintained by workers in white uniforms. He passed a parking lot full of luxury cars, including what appeared to be the first pink Cadillac he had ever seen in real life. At the palace, he met his charges: Salman s four sons from his second wife, the eldest of whom was a mischievous 11-year-old named Mohammed bin Salman.<br><br>The young princes clearly had more interest in playing than in studying, but Sekkai did his best to keep the younger boys focused, an effort that collapsed when MBS showed up.<br><br>As the oldest of his siblings, he seemed to be allowed to do as he pleased, Sekkai recalled. During the lessons, MBS would take a walkie-talkie from one of the guards to make cheeky remarks about his instructor and joke with the guards on the other end of the line to regale his siblings.<br><br>After a few lessons, MBS informed Sekkai that his mother considered the tutor a true gentleman. Sekkai was surprised, as Saudi Arabia s gender segregation had prevented him from meeting the mother, much less giving her a chance to assess his character. Then he realized that she had been watching him through the surveillance cameras on the walls.<br><br>That left him feeling self-conscious, but he pressed on. The boys did not make much progress in English, and into his late twenties, MBS avoided speaking the language in public. They made even less progress in French, which the princes mother requested that Sekkai add to the curriculum. But by the end of his tenure, Sekkai had grown fond of the spirited young MBS, years later recalling his imposing personality. Sekkai assumed it came from his status as the eldest of his mother s sons and the attention his immediate family lavished on him.<br><br>He was the admired figure, which gave him that sense of I am in charge here, Sekkai said. In that palace, he was the one that everybody looked after. He got the attention of everybody.<br><br>MBS s father, Salman bin Abdulaziz, was a handsome, hardworking prince with jet black hair, a goatee, and a reputation for rectitude and toughness. When he traveled abroad, he sported suits with wide lapels and striped ties that invited comparisons to Wall Street bankers or characters from James Bond films. At home, he wore traditional, princely regalia and presided over the Saudi capital and surrounding areas as the governor of Riyadh. Residents joked that they could set their watches to the sight of his convoy heading to work in the morning, hours before other princes got out of bed. To run the capital, he kept tabs on the area s tribes, clerics, and big clans including his own. For years, he was the disciplinarian of the royal family. If a fight between royal cousins over a piece of real estate got out of hand, if a princess bailed on an astronomical hotel bill in Paris, if a prince got drunk and caused a scandal, iANEW YORK TIMESEDITORSCHOICE A gripping, behind-the-scenes portrait of the rise of Saudi Arabia s secretive and mercurial new ruler<br><br>Revelatory . . . a vivid portrait of how MBS has altered the kingdom during his half-decade of rule.The Washington Post <br><br>Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld AwardONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Kirkus Reviews<br><br>MBSis the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia s sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East and gather as much power as possible into his own hands. Since his father, King Salman, ascended to the throne in 2015, Mohammed bin Salman has leveraged his influence to restructure the kingdom s economy, loosen its strict Islamic social codes, and confront its enemies around the region, especially Iran. That vision won him fans at home and on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, in Hollywood, and at the White House, where President Trump embraced the prince as a key player in his own vision for the Middle East. But over time, the sheen of the visionary young reformer has become tarnished, leaving many struggling to determine whether MBS is in fact a rising dictator whose inexperience and rash decisions are destabilizing the world s most volatile region.<br> <br>Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews,MBSreveals the machinations behind the kingdom s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen, the bizarre detention of princes and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, and the shifting Saudi relationships with Israel and the United States. And finally, it sheds new light on the greatest scandal of the young autocrat s rise: the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, a crime that shook Saudi Arabia s relationship with Washington and left the world wondering whether MBS could get away with murder.<br> <br>MBSis a riveting, eye-opening account of how the young prince has wielded vast powers to reshape his kingdom and the world around him.1USNominiert: PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, 2021Ben Hubbard has spent more than a dozen years reporting in the Middle East, where he is the Beirut bureau chief forThe New York Times.

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