A master storyteller and one of today’s most acclaimed historians, Simon Sebag Montefiore offers a sweeping, revelatory journey through the making of the modern Middle East. Long a cradle of faiths, a battleground of empires, a flashpoint for global conflict, and the heart of world affairs, the region continues to fascinate and unsettle in equal measure.

In The Cauldron, Simon Sebag Montefiore delivers a fresh and unique history of the entire region in all its diversity, from 1900 up to the present day. Taking the reader on a spectacular journey from the Ottoman sultanate to the Trump presidency, from Morocco to Iran, this is a dazzling panorama of faith and fanaticism, creativity and tolerance, dictatorship and democracy brought to life by an extraordinary cast of kings, warriors, poets, terrorists and peacemakers.

This is the essential story of how the Middle East of 1900 became the Middle East of today – and tomorrow.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian whose prize-winning books have been published in forty-eight languages. He has also written and presented five BBC TV series including Jerusalem: The Making of a Holy City; Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain; Rome: A History of the Eternal City; and Vienna: Empire Dynasty and Dream.

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