Featuring intriguing stories of Jerusalemites from every walk of life, Nine Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Old City by British journalist Matthew Teller celebrates the multitude of communities that live, and have lived, inside the city's 16th-century walls. In Teller's book--the equivalent to a pleasantly meandering literary stroll--readers will enjoy meeting the locals one does not typically encounter in Western narratives of Jerusalem, including the Armenian ceramic tile artist who created the elegantly painted trilingual street name-plates that adorn the city.
Teller (Quite Alone: Journalism from the Middle East 2008-2019), a regular visitor to Jerusalem since childhood, marvels at the "the city of icebergs," a place where nothing is what it seems on the surface. The daily reality of living in one of the most harshly surveilled places in the world, a holy land idealized as a place of "heavenly perfection," takes a toll on residents, whose struggles are exacerbated by the "grinding injustices" they face daily at the hands of Israeli authorities. An eloquent storyteller with a gracious regard for the marginalized voices of Jerusalem's Armenian, African and Gypsy communities, the author traces the neglected architectural legacy of remarkable women who called Jerusalem home. Roxelana, a sultan's wife from the 1500s who built what might be the world's oldest continually operating soup kitchen, is but one of the enchanting characters whose stories readers will enjoy.
Teller's is a historically accurate, equitable vision of Jerusalem as a place of transcendent and borderless spirituality. It reveals a city not divided along religious lines but rather united in its embrace of religious diversity. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer