Over the past fifteen years, Ammiel Alcalay has written and published as a poet, translator, critic, and scholar. In Memories of Our Future, evidence of his unique intellectual and political path has now been collected in one volume. In a mix of personal narrative, political commentary, and literary criticism, Alcalay surveys diverse subjects, among them Mediterranean culture, Arabic literature, the destruction of Carthage, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the war in Bosnia.

Juan Goytisolo, in his introduction to the present volume, writes: "Mingling an evocation of past horrors with those of the present, Memories of Our Future provides access to the diverse and changing space of the Balkans and the Middle East through witnesses and victims of a destructive and imposed history. In light of so many cover ups and false geneologies, intellectuals freed from nationalist blinders, religious exclusivity and mythology, must conclude–with Ammiel Alcalay’s honesty and rigor–that their homeland (as Cervantes discovered in his day), is the fertile territory of doubt."

"Ammiel Alcalay brings to any subject an acute sensitivity to writing and a sophisticated understanding of the way politics works to produce and maintain literature. He is a unique and important figure in contemporary world literature." - Lynne Tillman

"Few contemporary intellectuals can boast of as diverse a range of skills as Ammiel Alcalay. His work is cosmopolitan in the best sense: in an epoch of superficial globalism his approach to the cultures he deals with is always rigorous, always meticulously respectful of particularities and differences. There is no one better qualified to explore the meaning of today's 'culture wars,' locally and globally." - Amitav Ghosh

		Ammiel Alcalay teaches at Queens College where he chairs the Department of Classical, Middle Eastern, and Asian Languages and Cultures. He is the author of After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture. He is also the editor and translator of Keys to the Garden, an anthology of new Israeli writing, and Semezdin Mehmedinovic's Sarajevo Blues, both published by City Lights.