Overview

The Maldives is a small and beautiful archipelago south of India, more renowned for luxury resorts than experiments in democracy. It is a country of contradictions, where tourists sip cocktails on the beach while on nearby islands local women are flogged for extramarital sex and blackmarket vodka costs $140 a bottle. Until 2008 the Maldives also hosted Asia's longest-serving dictator, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. A former political prisoner, Mohamed Nasheed, an environmental activist, journalist, and politician, brought Gayoom's thirty-year autocracy to a sudden end, in the Maldives' first democratic elections. Young, progressive and charismatic, President Nasheed thrust the Maldives into the spotlight as a symbol of the fight against climate change and the struggle for democracy and human rights in one of the world's strictest Islamic societies. But dictatorships are hard to defeat, enduring in a country's institutions and the minds of people conditioned to autocracy over three decades. Democracy brought turmoil, protests, violence and intense political polarisation.The ousted dictatorship overthrew Nasheed's government in February 2012, supported by Islamic radicals and mutinying security forces. Amid Byzantine intrigue, the fight for democracy was just beginning.

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9781849045896

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Reviews

'Little is published on the Maldives ... J.J. Robinson's new book is a rare, welcome contribution. A British-Australian who for several years edited Minivan News, easily the country's best newspaper, he reported close-up on matters to which few outsiders pay great attention.' - Economist; 'It is putting it mildly to say that the real Maldives is nothing like the holiday paradise experienced by most of the beach tourists and scuba divers who visit the islands, and JJ Robinson's political history - one of very few to have been published on the Indian Ocean archipelago - tells us why.' --Financial Times; 'Entertaining book, which is stuffed with heroes, villains, coups and countercoups, as well as plenty of sex, religion and corruption. It reads like a Carl Hiaasen novel.' - Literary Review; 'Maldivians won't thank Robinson for this portrait, and yet it's horribly compelling...there's courage and defiance at the heart of this book...a sad and salutary tale, boldly told.' --The Spectator; 'Too little attention has been paid to the Maldives as a country, rather than a luxury resort. As J.J. Robinson notes in this comprehensive, perceptive and readable account of it's recent politics, the island nation has been a bellwether of change, good and bad, across much of the Islamic World. Any one interested in south Asia, and the tensions in many other Muslim countries, should read this excellent book.' - Jason Burke, South Asia correspondent of the Guardian, and author of The New Threat From Islamic Militancy; 'A compelling and frightening account of a young democracy betrayed by corruption and Islamic extremism - the Maldives may be a small country, but JJ Robinson's book has lessons that need to be learned worldwide.' - Mark Lynas, climate advisor to former President Nasheed

'Too little attention has been paid to the Maldives as a country, rather than a luxury resort. As J.J. Robinson notes in this comprehensive, perceptive and readable account of it's recent politics, the island nation has been a bellwether of change, good and bad, across much of the Islamic World. Any one interested in south Asia, and the tensions in many other Muslim countries, should read this excellent book.' - Jason Burke, South Asia correspondent of the Guardian, and author of The New Threat From Islamic Militancy

'Too little attention has been paid to the Maldives as a country, rather than a luxury resort. As J.J. Robinson notes in this comprehensive, perceptive and readable account of it's recent politics, the island nation has been a bellwether of change, good and bad, across much of the Islamic World. Any one interested in south Asia, and the tensions in many other Muslim countries, should read this excellent book.' - Jason Burke, South Asia correspondent of the Guardian, and author of The New Threat From Islamic Militancy; 'A compelling and frightening account of a young democracy betrayed by corruption and Islamic extremism - the Maldives may be a small country, but JJ Robinson's book has lessons that need to be learned worldwide.' - Mark Lynas, climate advisor to former President Nasheed

Author Information

J. J. Robinson was formerly editor of the Maldives' only independent English news service, Minivan News. He is a Fulbright scholar and graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.

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