Horrendous news from the Middle East fills our newspapers and screens every day. How can we begin to understand what drives people to treat each other as they do? "Medieval" is a word often used. Well-informed commentators analyse political and military issues but give little insight into the cultural and domestic backgrounds of the protagonists.

"Living with Arabs" is an account of nine years spent visiting and living among the Bedouin tribes of Petra in southern Jordan; in some ways a world away from the neighbouring war zones. Through insightful accounts of day-to-day life, a world of nobility and simplicity is revealed: so too is a world of violence, gender imbalance, and the significance of Islam.

It is a story that begins viewed through rose-coloured spectacles and moves to a gripping realisation of reality. The shocking, the funny, the heart-warming – it is all here.