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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`Book of the week' --Glasgow Herald
`A thoughtful and wry book' --Big Issue
`A thoughtful and wry book' --Big Issue
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Despite the author being carried away from time to time by his own acerbic wit I read Joe Bennett's book on Dubai with a great deal of pleasure. I lived in Dubai for fifteen years from 1986 so I knew the good times so full of optimism, and I glimpsed the coming bad times. When I left the rot, Joe describes so well, had set in. In contrast to my fifteen years I suspect that Joe spent fifteen days charging around Dubai and the UAE armed with notebook, pencil and his acute powers of observation. It's a very good read which swings along at a good pace but he makes a few howlers like calling the Musandam peninsula the Mussulman peninsula, groper fish (grouper the alternative name sounds better) are called hamour in the Gulf and the flash of a blue bird's wings were more likely those of an Indian Roller than a Kingfisher.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By M. Smith
Format:Paperback
I love reading Joe Bennett and discovered him while out in New Zealand. His book "A Land of Two Halves" was a great read for me as I discovered the country where he now lives. Joe's style is wonderful and refreshing and, as usual, you learn much about Joe himself as you do about the place. Its a personal look at a country. Unfortunately, this is not his best and for the same reasons that all his travel books since "A Land..." have let me down. My reason is simple. Joe is a funny guy. A land of two Halves was laugh-out-loud funny. Joe seems to have forgotten to have a giggle while he writes. It was the humour that made me like Joe's travel writing and it has all but gone in this book. Such a shame. All his other writing qualities remain (hence a 3/5) but the humour value is just too important to drop, I think.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Matt
Format:Paperback
I have read most of Joe Bennetts books and this is up there with the rest. A fantastic read on a curious 'new' world.
Great insight in to the way Dubai works and funny throughout.
Great insight in to the way Dubai works and funny throughout.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The rise & rise of Dubai is a modern day phenomenon. From nowhere it has become one of the most visited cities in the world. Millions of tourists are drawn there every year, enticed by the almost wall to wall glitz and the glamour. Whilst it has many attractions old & new there is no doubt that the biggest attraction for most tourists are the countless shopping opportunities. They flock to the many shopping malls, each with its own unique selling point (for example in this book Joe Bennett visits a mall with a dry skiing runs and one that has a giant aquarium) where they can spend their money their hearts content. If Las Vegas is the gambling capital of the world, Dubai is surely the world capital for materialism.
It is the sort of place that wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea and it clearly wasn't Joe Bennett's. Although away from the malls, beaches, hotels and bars he found some traces of `old' Dubai but he feared that even those would either soon disappear, either bulldozed to make room for new housing for wealthy ex pats or tarted up to become a new tourist attraction. He also found Dubai to be a society completely divided by money; the residents in Dubai are either the rich, with their big condo's and their big cars, or the poor, whose purpose in life is to be of service the rich.
Although this book is primarily about Dubai, Bennett also visits many of the other six member states that comprise the United Arab Emirates and finds many of them much more to his taste. This though is the cause of one of my biggest gripes about this book - why is there not a map of the UAE included? I haven't a clue about the geography of the region, so even an extremely simple one would have been useful in helping to follow each journey that Bennett makes.... Read more ›
It is the sort of place that wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea and it clearly wasn't Joe Bennett's. Although away from the malls, beaches, hotels and bars he found some traces of `old' Dubai but he feared that even those would either soon disappear, either bulldozed to make room for new housing for wealthy ex pats or tarted up to become a new tourist attraction. He also found Dubai to be a society completely divided by money; the residents in Dubai are either the rich, with their big condo's and their big cars, or the poor, whose purpose in life is to be of service the rich.
Although this book is primarily about Dubai, Bennett also visits many of the other six member states that comprise the United Arab Emirates and finds many of them much more to his taste. This though is the cause of one of my biggest gripes about this book - why is there not a map of the UAE included? I haven't a clue about the geography of the region, so even an extremely simple one would have been useful in helping to follow each journey that Bennett makes.... Read more ›
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By DaveS
Format:Paperback
I love reading Joe Bennett's books and I think this is probably the best so far.
Joe has a wonderfully descriptive and funny way of writing and I find a lot of his views resonate with me.
I hope he's off on holiday somewhere fantastic at the moment so I can read another one of his great books soon.
Joe has a wonderfully descriptive and funny way of writing and I find a lot of his views resonate with me.
I hope he's off on holiday somewhere fantastic at the moment so I can read another one of his great books soon.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By solda
Format:Paperback
This book lifted Dubai's veil to see what the tourist doesn't. As a Dubai expat, I thought my eyes were comparatively open, but Joe Bennett still probed Dubai Inc and highlighted aspects of daily life that many of us just never saw. Joe looks at all cultures and traveled well beyond the malls and beaches in his quest for a true perspective. I regularly found myself nodding in agreement as he burrowed under the structural chrome to reveal many unknown or taken for granted truths. This book is a great summer read on the beach, a gift for extended families of expats, or even UAE nationals themselves.
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