Reviews

Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century , Richard C. Foltz, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 186 pp., ISBN 0–312–21408–1.

Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco‐Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ^cAbbasid Society (2nd‐4th/8th‐10th centuries) , by Dimitri Gutas, London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

A Short History of the Isma^cilis. Traditions of a Muslim community , Farhad Daftary, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998, viii + 248 pp. (Islamic Surveys).

Napoleon and Persia: Franco‐Persian Relations under the First Empire , Iradj Amini, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1999, 228 pp.

Napoléon et la Perse: Les relations franco‐persanes sous le Premier Empire , Iradj Amini, Paris: Fondation Napoléon, 1995, 254 pp.

A Literary History of Persia , Edward G. Browne, 4 volumes, reprinted Iran‐books / Ibex Publishers, Bethesda 1997.

The Divan‐i Hafiz , H. Wilberforce‐Clarke, reprinted Iranbooks/Ibex Publishers, Bethesda, 1998.

Modern Persian Prose Literature , Hassan Kamshad, reprinted Iranbooks/Ibex Publishers, Bethesda, 1996.

Borrowed Ware: Medieval Persian Epigrams ,Dick Davis, trans., Washington, D.C.: Mage, 1997, 203 pp.

Asemun Rismun , Iraj Pezeshkzad, Bethesda, Maryland: Iranbooks,1997, x +300 pp., includes biographical reference and index, ISBN 0–936347–79–1.

La belle rivale de Farah et les jeux du destin , Anna‐Lisa Vafa, Paris: Les Editions la Bruyère, 1998, 103 pp.

The Arrest of Hoveyda: Stories of the Iranian Revolution , Saïdeh Pakravan, Costa Mesa, California: Blind Owl Press (an imprint of Mazda Publishers), 1998, 134 pp.

A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian Americans , edited by Persis M. Karim and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami, New York: George Braziller, 1999, xxvii + 254 pp.

The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadriddin Aini , trans., with an introduction, by John R. Perry and Rachel Lehr, Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 1998, 275 pp., illus., maps, ISBN 1–56859–078–4.

Tajikistan:The Trials of Independence , eds. Mohammad‐Reza Djalili, Frédéric Grare, and Shirin Akiner, Richmond (UK): Curzon Press, 1998.

Central Asia meets the Middle East , David Menashri, ed., London & Portland, OR.: Frank Cass & Co Ltd., 1998, ISBN 0–7146–4600–8 (cloth), 9–7146–4129–4 (paper), xiii + 240 pp., map, index.

Arab‐Iranian Relations , Khair El‐Din Haseeb (ed.), Beirut/London: Centre for Arab Unity Studies/Brítish Academic Press, 1998, 564 pp., $59.50 (hardcover).

The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture , ed. Cosroe Chaqueri, Cambridge: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1998, 408 pp., photographs.

Women and the Political Process in Twentieth‐Century Iran , Parvin Paidar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xvi+401 pp.

Secularization of Iran: A Doomed Failure? The New Middle Class and the Making of Modern Iran , Azadeh Kian‐Thiébault, Paris, France: Diffusion Peet‐ers, Travaux et mémoires de l'Institut d'études iraniennes, numéro 3, 1998, 296 pps.

An Islamic Utopian: a political biography of Ali Shari^cati , Ali Rahnema. London and New York: I.B. Tauris (St. Martin's Press), 1998. xiii, 418 pp., bibliography, index, ISBN 1–86064–118–0.

Persian Painting ,Sheila R. Canby, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993, 128 pp., 43 color and 44 black‐and‐white illustrations, map, bibliography, index, ISBN 0–500–27730–3.

Early Persian tilework: the medieval flowering of kashi , Douglas Pickett, Madison, Teaneck, and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 1997, 211 pp.

The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise , Mehdi Khansari, M. Reza Moghtader, and Minouch Yavari, Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 1998, 169 pp.     

Futurism from foundation to world war: the art and politics of an avant-garde movement

The cultural influence of the Futurist art movement on the modern era is undisputed. Of course, it is also undisputed that the movement was deeply involved in the politics of both liberal and Fascist Italy. Futurist politics were characterized by a pronounced nationalism and imperialism, but in the early years were also known for advancing ideas more associated with the extreme left, such as republicanism, anti-clericalism, and workers’ advancement through revolution. There is no consensus on how to narrate Futurist politics, or their relationship to Futurist art. Were the politics more of the left or the right? And, more to the point, should the politics be studied in isolation, or as integral to the broad ‘Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe’? This article takes the latter approach and offers an interpretation that unifies the art and politics of the Futurist movement from its foundation in 1909 through to Italy’s entry into the Great War. I argue that the Futurists themselves did not differentiate between their cultural initiatives to modernize Italy or their political interventionism. In looking at key moments in the political evolution of the movement, and the corresponding artwork of the period, I show that Futurism offered a confused political message in its first years, mixing elements of the left and right, but after the Libyan War and especially in the interventionist period, the political message became much more stridently nationalistic and bellicose, and such themes became prevalent in the art of that time.     

On the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles reflecting the current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, edited by Annalisa Capristo and Ernest Ialongo, marks the 80^th anniversary of the implementation of the Racial Laws in Fascist Italy. It is an opportunity to assess the evolution of the historical literature on Fascist anti-Semitism and to mark future directions for research, but also to pay homage to Michele Sarfatti, who was critical in the development of the current state of the historiography on the subject. Where the earlier work, before the 1980s, was founded on the idea of ‘Italiani brava gente’, wherein Italy’s role was downplayed in the persecution of the Jews and in the Holocaust, that Italians were simply too humane to have participated in such horrific events, Sarfatti’s work launched a veritable revolution in the field, which dismantled all the tenets of the original consensus. This introduction surveys these developments, and summarizes the contributions of the varied authors published here who continue to challenge old truths and bring us closer to a more full and accurate understanding of Fascist anti-Semitism.