India, Sept. 19 -- The ongoing conflict in West Asia has expanded with the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabian territories and Riyadh retaliating with strikes on Yemeni territory. Since the 1970s, West Asia has been locked in intermittent conflict - with the two regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, at its centre. Against this backdrop, we recommend journalist Kim Ghattas's Black Wave. It explores the uneasy Arab-Persian dynamic, going back to the pre-Islamic age, that has defined West Asia in recent decades - through the two principal rivals as well as smaller regional players. Ghattas posits 1979 as a pivotal year, when the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was attacked by fundamentalists, and the erstwhile USSR began its military campaign in Afghanistan. She shows how seemingly unrelated strands of history and politics came together disastrously to destabilise the region and open it further to foreign interferences....