Walls

Product Description

The world's walls are supposed to be coming down. We speak of globalization, international markets & global villages; barriers to trade keep falling, & it is now possible to communicate instantly from nearly anywhere in the world. But just as these virtual walls come down, real walls rise. In this evocative blend of travel writing, history & politics, Marcello Di Cintio visits the world's most disputed edges to meet those who live alongside the razor wire, concrete & steel. Along the way he shares tea with refugees on the wrong side of Morocco's desert wall; he encounters illegal immigrants circumventing high-tech fencing around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta & Melilla; he walks Arizona's migrant trails, visits fenced-in villages in India, & stands with those who protest against Israel's security barrier to understand what these structures say about those who build them, & how they influence the cultures that they pen in. Venturing beyond politics, he encounters the infiltrators who circumvent the walls, the artists who transform them, & the fenced-in ignored & forgotten people who live in their shadow. The walls discussed are: 1.' The Wall of Shame' in the Western Sahara, built by the Morrocans in 1987 following their defeat by the Spanish. 2. A high-tech 'fence' around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta & Meilla. 3. The Indo Bangladesh 'fence', erected in 1947. 4. The West Bank Wall. 5. The 'green line' that separates the Greek from the Turkish-Cypriot quarters in Nicosia, the capital of Cypress, & Lefkosa, the capital of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. 6. The US-Mexico border. 7. The various barriers throughout Belfast. 8. The l' Acadie fence in Montreal, erected as a wall built of chains in 1960.