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Boom town, modern marvel, commercial hub, where middle-east meets wealthy west, playground for tourists, crawling with ex-pats, built by Indians, owned by Arabs, Dubai has risen from next to nothing to an awful lot in little more than thirty years. How? And can it go on? Has it sold itself to the corporate dollar? Is it anything more than a mall in the desert? Will the sands return? Joe Bennett goes to find out.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I lived in Dubai for 2.5 years, and so was quite interested to read another outsider's view of the city. I was disappointed though in reading Joe Bennett's account, as it turned out that the whole book was based on not much more than one week's trip to the UAE. He only spent a few days in Dubai, before travelling out around the other Emirates, and does not make it to the capital Abu Dhabi at all.
Dubai tends to have a marmite effect on people - you either love it or you hate it. Bennett is quick to point out the many problems of the city, as have been many others - the autocracy of the ruling sheikhs, the exploitation of the sub-continental workers labouring on construction sites, the vacuousness of some expats lives, the bling of the shopping malls against the lack of true local culture - but does not seem to find anyone who actually likes living there. And having spent a longer time there myself, I can say that actually some people do, which is why they stay for years or even decades.
He writes well in terms of allowing you to imagine the scenes that he finds himself in, not least in stretching such a short trip into an average length book, and also in getting to meet a number of people from all walks of life who live in the UAE. However he still does not get under the skin of a place which, despite its comparative youth on the world stage, is a complex, and hence at least interesting, part of the world.
Dubai tends to have a marmite effect on people - you either love it or you hate it. Bennett is quick to point out the many problems of the city, as have been many others - the autocracy of the ruling sheikhs, the exploitation of the sub-continental workers labouring on construction sites, the vacuousness of some expats lives, the bling of the shopping malls against the lack of true local culture - but does not seem to find anyone who actually likes living there. And having spent a longer time there myself, I can say that actually some people do, which is why they stay for years or even decades.
He writes well in terms of allowing you to imagine the scenes that he finds himself in, not least in stretching such a short trip into an average length book, and also in getting to meet a number of people from all walks of life who live in the UAE. However he still does not get under the skin of a place which, despite its comparative youth on the world stage, is a complex, and hence at least interesting, part of the world.
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