Yet it falls to fiction to truly capture life in the Middle East over the last 100 years. Munif’s evocative novel, for example, first published in Lebanon in 1984, recounts the devastating encounter ...

Jesus would have been a man of Middle Eastern appearance. In terms of height, an average man of this time stood 166 cm (5 ft 5 in) tall. Our overall appearance, though, is not just about our bodies.