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  Book review

A Yemen Reality

Salma Samar Damluji

Garnet Publishing

Dr. Samar Damluji is clearly a serious scholar, but this is not a seriously academic book only for academics.

It is a pictorial exultation, a love affair with the architecture, the people and the landscape of the southern Yemen. Geographically and stylistically, it portrays the full range of local architectural traditions excellently in their frequently dramatic settings.

The photographs vary in quality from the stunning to the holiday snap, with rather too many of the latter and there are a number of minor inaccuracies in the text. Dathina was never part of the Audhali Sultanate, for example.

But such is the nature of love affairs and I hope that all other lovers of south Yemen get as much pleasure from this book as I did.

JAMES NASH, November 1994