This book will always feel important to me because it deeply informed by senior year capstone paper for my bachelor’s degree. It is about how the postwar Saudi state re-envisioned the meaning of the Saudi nation through revising the country’s national archive and reordering its urban centers. For me, learning this history was personal because it helped me understand the rapid cultural shifts I witnessed, but did not quite comprehend, growing up in Riyadh. Most importantly, this book imparts a lesson applicable beyond just Saudi Arabia — it reveals that national identity as a general concept is wholly malleable. In the context of the nation state, national identity is often top-down manipulated in accordance with state interests.
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