Ali al Jabri was an Arab artist who was murdered in 2002, a violent and lonely end to a life of passionate creativity and a restless search for identity. Ali was stranded between an English education and a struggle to find relevance in his Arab homeland, caught between his talents, his sexuality and the claims of his distinguished family. Amal Ghandour's painstakingly researched portrait reaches beyond the angst of a troubled artist to illuminate a whole people and a lost era. She reveals the lasting effects of colonial attitudes, and how the twin brutalities of the Arab world – Islamic fundamentalism and nationalistic military regimes – have waged war against the cultural and political possibilites of the region. Ali refused to remain an Arab expatriate, an exile in the gilded drawing rooms of Manhattan, Paris and London, and for this he paid with his life. This intimate and candid biography revels in the intricate realities of the Middle East, both past and present.