People of Ras Al Khaimah

PEOPLE OF RAS AL KHAIMAH is an important book. It captures the inimitable atmosphere of the city and its natural environments - the mountains, the sea, the desert and the farms. But more than that, Anna Zacharias and Jeff Topping have documented the stories of the people who shaped Ras Al Khaimah's great economic, political and social transformation in the second half of the twentieth century. We usually describe this as "modernisation" or "after oil" or "after qiyam al-dawla," the establishment of the state. The accounts here show this transformation meant in human terms. Anna Zacharias and Jeff Topping spent three years talking to residents, teasing out their personal stories and photographing them at work and play in all their diverse backgrounds. While documents offer much insight in certain types of history, they leave out the voices of ordinary people recorded here in this book.