Search results for ""saqi books""

Offers an account of a cross-cultural marriage.

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Against the backdrop of Nazism, in a multi-racial Turkey giving sanctuary to many of Europe's fleeing Jews, a group of teenage friends struggles to understand events while reeling from the sexual and emotional discoveries of adolescence. An alluring woman initiates Mustafa and his classmates in the carnal delights of rose petal jam; Musa discovers the hard facts of reaching manhood when he is expelled from the women's baths; Bilal, a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy, sets off for Greece to rescue his mother's sister; and a circus orphan known only as `Girl' falls head over heels for the new trapeze artist ... Young Turk is a wise, craftily-spun and spine-tinglingly erotic tale of love, courage and the forging of conscience.

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Christopher and Alexandra's passion for one another raises eyebrows and invites envy. This beautiful, blinkered couple do the unthinkable and run away from home, abandoning their two teenage children. This is a story of obsessive love and a testimony to the bonds that tie us to our past, regardless of distance or time travelled.

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The Exile’s Cookbook brings together 480 recipes, including roasts and stews, breads, condiments, preserves, sweetmeats, and even hand-washing soaps. It offers a fascinating insight into the cuisine of Muslim Spain and North Africa in the period – its regional characteristics and historical antecedents, but also its links to culinary traditions in other parts of the Muslim world. This elegant translation by Daniel L. Newman is based on all the manuscripts of the text that are known to have survived. It is accompanied by an introduction and extensive notes contextualising the recipes, ingredients, tableware and cooking practices.

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Sara is a philosophy professor at Kuwait University. Her relationship with Kuwait is complicated; it is a country she recognises less and less. Yet since her return from the States eleven years earlier, a certain inertia has kept her there. When she is accused of blasphemy, which carries with it the threat of execution, Sara realises she must reconcile her feelings and her place in the world once and for all. Awaiting trial, Sara retraces the past, intent on examining the lives of the women who made her. She conjures forth her grandmothers - beautiful and stubborn Yasmine, who marries the son of the Pasha of Basra and lives to regret it, and Lulwa, born poor in Kuwait and later swept off to India by her wealthy merchant husband. An Unlasting Home brings to life the triumphs and failures of three generations of Arab women. At once intimate and sweeping, personal and political, it is an unforgettable family portrait and a spellbinding epic tale.

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Malika Moustadraf is a cult feminist icon in contemporary Moroccan literature, celebrated for her uncompromising depiction of life on the margins. Something Strange, Like Hunger presents Moustadraf's collected short fiction: haunting, visceral stories by a master of the genre. Here, we tune into Casablanca's unheard: a sex worker struggling to keep warm on the streets; a housewife flirting with strangers online; a kidney patient, priced-out of treatment, facing the harsh reality of his condition; and a mother scheming to ensure her daughter passes a virginity test. Something Strange, Like Hunger is a sharp provocation to patriarchal power, and a celebration of the life and genius of one of Morocco's preeminent writers.

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Myths arose in Europe about far-flung exotic lands - particularly Serbia and Montenegro - based on the nineteenth-century heroic epic poetry of the South Slavs. These were lands populated by 'noble savages' for whom freedom and martial honour were of supreme importance, and they filtered down into the formation of the first and second Yugoslav states (1918-41 and 1945-89), which utilized themes from patriarchal popular culture and the anti-Ottoman epics for their own political ends. Ivo aniae reveals how, during the last decade-and-a-half of the twentieth century, military and political leaders in Belgrade followed this pattern of selecting and manipulating cultural motifs in order to justify their repression of Kosovans, and their aggression in Croatia and Bosnia. But he reveals too how the Croatian and Bosnian military and political elites mobilized their own social memories during the post-Yugoslav wars. Drawing on a wealth of sources - including print media, TV broadcasts, political speeches, and particularly new epic poems, unveiled at political rallies or before military or paramilitary audiences then widely distributed on audio cassette - aniae's book is far-reaching, revealing how war profiteers, paramilitary leaders, plunderers and charlatans took their places harmoniously within the universal theme of Robin Hood, growing into models of local identity and even into national icons and political exemplars.

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Passionate and renowned chefs Andree Malouf and Karim Haidar continue the Lebanese tradition of exquisite culinary invention in this collection of soups, salads, meats and deserts. Over a hundred inventive recipes are included in this beautifully illustrated book: lentil soup with tomatoes, calamari and coriander salad, five-spice lamb and rice, fried halloumi cheese with quince jam, pumpkin kibbeh, pears in arak, and rose ice cream, to name but a few. This is authentic and exciting Mediterranean food, using fresh and healthy ingredients, perfect for everyday eating and entertaining alike. It is presented with a preface by Amim Maalouf.

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Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim and Adonis are amongst the leading poets in the Arab world today. Victims of a Map presents some of their finest work in translation, alongside the original Arabic, including thirteen poems by Darwish never before published - in English or Arabic - and a long work by Adonis written during the 1982 siege of Beirut, also published here for the first time.

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The Arab world's strategic location and its considerable material and human potential should allow it to play a major role in world affairs. However, plagued by authoritarian regimes, ethnic and social cleavages, economic underdevelopment and military weakness, these states depend on the outside for security. In this balanced and discerning study, Hassan Hamdan al-Alkim examines the dynamics of Arab foreign-policy-making in the twenty-first century. He considers the significance of a changing world order, an unstable Arab regional order, and the Arab-Israeli conflict for Arab foreign policy-making processes. The book's four case studies - the Middle East Peace process, the Water crisis, the Food crisis, and Saudi Arabia's foreign policy - enable a wide-ranging analysis for understanding contemporary Arab politics and its role in world affairs.

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This is the story of Zena, a young woman who has fallen under the spell of a city that threatens to engulf her in war, grief and love affairs. In the streets armed militias carve out their territories, while ragged construction workers rebuild the city. Refugees sleep five to a bed as bleach-blondes wend their way to the next drug-fuelled supernightclub. At any moment, the bombs will start falling. Meanwhile, Zena and her best friend Maya must try to make sense of their lives amidst the craziness, and negotiate the city's many obsessions including cosmetic surgery, husband hunting and Kalashnikovs. As honest as it is forgiving, this artist's memoir pits love and art against the ever-present threat of war.

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A groundbreaking survey of the language used around queerness in the Arab world, with contributions by leading Arab queer writers, thinkers and activists

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What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century?Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan. Soon Angela is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as the latter tries to grasp the internet and scams bookshops with 'rare signed editions'. Then Virginia insists on flying with her to Istanbul, finds a Turkish admirer and steals the show at an International Conference on - Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life.

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WINNER OF THE 2010 MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE Three sisters struggle to change the course of their destinies in a China that does not belong to them. Yumi uses her dignity, Yuxiu her seductive charms, and Yuyang her desire for success. This breathtaking story vividly captures the all-consuming desire for power in a society obsessed with saving face. Whether it's in the Wang family village, where lift is attuned to the rhythm of work and the slogans of the Cultural Revolution, or in urban China of the 1980s, the sisters are not prepared to be just another wave in the 'infinite ocean of people'.

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A twelve-year old boy returns to his village from school in Cairo to find the community torn by feud and fear. Working together, the young, old, men and women in the village discover that despite high rents, low wages, a greedy ruling-class, and attractive distractions, if you are faithful to the land, it will care for you. Egyptian Earth is an epic drama of great power. This compassionate and humorous tale of defiance is a masterpiece of modern Arabic literature.

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A history of two centuries of interactions among the areas bordering the western Indian Ocean, including India, Iran and Africa.

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A young Egyptian woman clashes with her traditional family when she chooses a career in medicine. Rather than submit to an arranged marriage and motherhood, she cuts her hair short and works fiercely to realise her dreams. At medical school, she begins to understand the mysteries of the human body. After years of denying her own desires, the doctor begins a series of love affairs that allow her to explore her sexuality - on her own terms.

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Since the first wave of uprisings in 2011, the euphoria of the "Arab Spring" has given way to the gloom of backlash and a descent into mayhem and war. The revolution has been overwhelmed by clashes between rival counter-revolutionary forces: resilient old regimes on the one hand and Islamic fundamentalist contenders on the other.In this eagerly awaited book, foremost Middle East and international affairs specialist Gilbert Achcar analyzes the factors of the regional relapse. Focusing on Syria and Egypt, Achcar assesses the present stage of the uprising and the main obstacles, both regional and international, that prevent any resolution. In Syria, the regime's brutality has fostered the rise of jihadist forces, among which the so-called Islamic State emerged as the most ruthless and powerful. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's year in power was ultimately terminated by the contradictory conjunction of a second revolutionary wave and a bloody reactionary coup. Events in Syria and Egypt offer salient examples of a pattern of events happening across the Middle East.Morbid Symptoms offers a timely analysis of the ongoing Arab uprising that will engage experts and general readers alike.Drawing on a unique combination of scholarly and political knowledge of the Arab region, Achcar argues that, short of radical social change, the region will not reach stability any time soon.

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Sima Samar has been fighting for justice all her life. Born into a polygamous family, Samar agreed to an arranged marriage to continue her own education. Once she had qualified as a doctor, she took off into rural areas on horse, donkey, even on foot to treat people who had never received medical help before. As the situation worsened, Samar found herself working in increasingly adverse circumstances, and in grave personal danger.After Samar's husband was disappeared by the regime, she faced a choice: to accept the injustices she saw around her or to keep driving for a better Afghanistan. From selling her own hand embroidered bed quilt to pay for her degree, to becoming Vice President in an office with no heating and only beach chairs, Samar has worked tirelessly for human rights in Afghanistan the worst country in the world to be a woman.In Outspoken, Samar writes unapologetically and unflinchingly about the colossal internal and international political failures th

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The twelve stories collected here are by leading authors of the short story form in the Middle East today. In addition to works by writers already well-known in the West such as "Idwar al-Kharrat", "Fuad al-Takarli" and Nobel Prize-winning "Naguib Mahfouz", the collection includes stories by key authors whose fame has hitherto been restricted to the Middle East. This bilingual reader is ideal for students of Arabic as well as lovers of literature who wish to broaden their appreciation of the work of Middle Eastern writers. The collection features stories in the original Arabic, accompanied by an English translation and a brief author biography, as well as a discussion of context and background. Each story is followed by a glossary and discussion of problematic language points.

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It is a little-known secret that Arabic literature has a long tradition of erotic writing. Behind that secret lies another - that many of the writers are women. We Wrote in Symbols celebrates the works of 75 of these female writers of Arab heritage who articulate love and lust with artistry and skill. Here, a wedding night takes an unexpected turn beneath a canopy of stars; a woman on the run meets her match in a flirtatious encounter at Dubai Airport; and a carnal awakening occurs in a Palestinian refugee camp. From a masked rendezvous in a circus, to meetings in underground bars and unmade beds, there is no such thing as a typical sexual encounter, as this electrifying anthology shows. Powerfully conveying the complexities and intrigues of desire, We Wrote in Symbols invites you to share these characters' wildest fantasies and most intimate moments.

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Daybreak in Gaza humanises the people dismissed as mere statistics and âcollateral damageâ, showing Gazans as artists and storytellers with lives full of culture and meaning. This book seeks to preserve the heritage that has been lost, and that which can never be lost, revealing the wealth of Gazaâs cultural landscape and the depth of its history.

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Setting the price of oil, one of the most sought-after and traded commodities in the global market, has been a major issue in the field of economics. In this book, Abdulaziz M. Aldukheil offers his mathematical base for setting the price of Middle Eastern crude oil and its application in oil exporting nations. Focusing on Saudi Arabia, An Optimum Base for Pricing Middle Eastern Crude Oil examines the deficiencies of present price-setting methods where production (extraction), trade, return on foreign investment and the subsequent investment of surplus revenues present complex questions for the Saudi Arabian economy. The author suggests that if the nation has to produce more oil than what it can invest in at home, it has to be offered foreign investment with a return equal to the annual real rate of growth crude oil price.

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In this classic work, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba asserts that Islam is a lyrical view of life in which sexuality enjoys a privileged status. Drawing on both Arabic and Western sources and seeking to integrate the religious and the sexual, Bouhdiba describes the place of sexuality in the traditional Islamic view of the world and examines whether a harmony of sexuality and religious faith is achieved in practice. Beginning with the Quran, Bouhdiba confronts the question of male supremacy in Islam and the strict separation of the masculine and the feminine. He considers purification practices; Islamic attitudes towards homosexuality, concubinage and legal marriage; and sexual taboos laid down by the Quran. Bouhdiba assesses contemporary sexual practice, including eroticism, misogyny and mysticism, and concludes that the ideal Islamic model of sexuality has been debased.

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Fred Halliday always combined the broad sweep of modern history, its currents and ideas with a profound knowledge of modern revolutions, the Middle East and national movements. This collection of columns written for openDemocracy between 2004 and 2009 is proof of a subtle worldview that continues to generate questions: what is the relation between religion, nationalism and progress? Is a new international order possible? When is intervention a force for progress? From the big headlines topics like the Iraq war or the Danish cartoons, to the unexpected comparisons, of Tibet and Palestine or Afghanistan and the Falklands, Halliday is a perennially surprising and enlightening guide to the major issues of international politics.

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The Husayni family of Jerusalem dominated Palestinian history for 250 years, from the Ottoman times through to the end of the British Mandate. At the height of the family's political influence, positions in Jerusalem could only be obtained through its power base.In this compelling political biography, Ilan Pappe traces the rise of the Husaynis from a provincial Ottoman elite clan into the leadership of the Palestinian national movement in the twentieth century. In telling their story, Pappe highlights the continuous urban history of Jerusalem and Palestine. Shedding new light on crucial events such as the invasion of Palestine by Napoleon, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, World War I and the advent of Zionism, this remarkable account provides an unforgettable picture of the Palestinian tragedy in its entirety.

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Lebanon today is at a fateful crossroads in its eventful socio-cultural and political history. Imperiled by unsettling transformations, from postwar reconstruction and rehabilitation to the forces of postmodernity and globalism, it remains adrift. In this landmark study, Samir Khalaf explores how ordinary citizens, burdened by the consequences of an ugly and unfinished war, persisting regional rivalries, mounting economic deprivation and diminishing prospects for well-being, find meaning and coherence in a society that has not only lost its moorings and direction, but also its sense of control. Khalaf argues that a mood of lethargy and indifference prevails, with a growing tendency for the Lebanese to seek refuge in religiosity, communalism and cloistered spatial identities, or temporary relief in the allure of mass consumerism.

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Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is hailed as one of the most charismatic political leaders of the twentieth century, but little is known today about his one and only wife, Latife Hanim. A multilingual intellectual educated at the Sorbonne, Latife's marriage to Ataturk in 1923 raised her to the pinnacle of political power. Hanim played a central role in the creation of a modern and secular Turkey and championed the emancipation of women. Throughout her marriage, she stood beside her husband, and acted as his interpreter, promoter and diplomatic aide. However, after only two years of marriage, Ataturk divorced Latife, who was shunned and blamed for the failure of the marriage. She spent the rest of her life in seclusion. An international bestseller, this intimate biography vividly brings to life the story of an exceptional and courageous woman, well ahead of her time, who lived through a remarkable period in Turkish history.

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In the space of a mere 20 years Gengis Khan rallied all the tribes of Mongolia and put Mongol society under a codified set of laws, much admired by Western travellers. At the head of his superbly disciplined army, he then embarked on the conquest of China. Hardly had Beijing fallen to him then he was off again, this time to lay waste to the Middle East. As the sun set over the land of the Thousand and One Nights, he summoned a famed Taoist to teach him the secrets of "long life" - as if, now that he was master of the world, he wished to conquer other domains than those that could be subjugated by the sword. From the 13th centure, the Mongol empire has been shrouded in mystery, and legends abound - the name of Gengis Khan is, to this day, synonymous with terror. Michael Hoang provides a different picture, showing that the "bloodthirsty barbarian" was also a visionary statesman and that behind the Oriental despot lay a strategist of genius. The book also provides insight into Mongol society and culture.

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Bahiah Shaheen, an eighteen-year-old medical student and the daughter of a prominent Egyptian public official, finds the male students in her class coarse and alien. Her father, too, seems to belong to a race apart. Frustrated by her hard-working, well-behaved, middle-class public persona, her meeting with a stranger at a gallery one day proves to be the beginning of her road to self-discovery and the start of her realisation that fulfilment in life is indeed possible.

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After Zionism brings together some of the world’s leading thinkers on the Middle East question. In thought-provoking essays, the contributors dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and explore possible forms of a one-state solution in the most conflicted part of the world. Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land. The Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza have given renewed urgency to the discussion of how to move towards a future that honours the rights of all who live in Palestine and Israel. This timely edition includes a new preface as well as challenging and insightful essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

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Yamina Taleb is approaching her seventieth birthday. Not that she's sure exactly when to celebrate it, since her Algerian identity papers state a different date of birth to her French ones. These days, Yamina strives for a quiet life and to be, at best, invisible. The closest she gets to drama is flashing her pensioner's bus pass in the style of police officers she's seen on television or scooping 'revolutionary' bargains in the form of plastic kitchenware gadgets. But Yamina's children feel differently. They are made to feel out of place in Paris, and it hurts. Then, for the first time in forty years, the whole family take a holiday from the city - not a return trip to the motherland, but a holiday in France. In the privacy of their villa-with-pool rental, it becomes clear to them all: there is no 'going back'. Alternating fragments from Yamina's Algerian past with those of her Paris present, Discretion spans the history of colonial conflict from the Second World War to the present day. A tribute to mothers everywhere, it is also the story of a modern French family feeling their way through the puzzle of their history - and finding one another as they go along.

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The Nawab Nazim was born into one of India's most powerful royal families. Three times the size of Great Britain, his kingdom ranged from the soaring Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. However, in 1880, he was forced to abdicate by the British authorities, who saw him as a threat and permanently abolished his titles. The Nawab's change in fortune marked the end of an era in India and left his secret English family abandoned. The Last Prince of Bengal tells the true story of the Nawab Nazim and his family as they sought by turns to befriend, settle in and eventually escape Britain. From glamourous receptions with Queen Victoria to a scandalous Muslim marriage with an English chambermaid; and from Bengal tiger hunts to sheep farming in the harsh Australian outback, Lyn Innes recounts her ancestors' extraordinary journey from royalty to relative anonymity. This compelling account visits the extremes of British rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exposing complex prejudices regarding race, class and gender. It is the intimate story of one family and their place in defining moments of recent Indian, British and Australian history.

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Jamilia's husband is off fighting at the front. She spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to the train station in their small village in the Caucasus, accompanied by Seit, her young brother-in-law, and Daniyar, a sullen newcomer to the village who has been wounded on the battlefield. Seit observes the beautiful, spirited Jamilia spurn men's advances, and wince at the dispassionate letters she receives from her husband. Meanwhile, undeterred by Jamilia's teasing, Daniyar sings as they return each evening from the fields. Soon Jamilia is in love, and she and Daniyar elope just as her husband returns.

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This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers - some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. heart-warming connections and moments of celebration sit alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab. From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where a crowd of thousands greet the rainbow flag, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience.

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Arab women poets have been around since the earliest of times, yet their diwans (collected poems) were not given the same consideration as their male counterparts'. Spanning 5,000 years, from the pre-Islamic to the Andalusian periods, Classical Poems by Arab Women presents rarely seen work by over fifty women writers for the first time. From the sorrowful eulogies of Khansa to the gleeful scorn of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, this collection exclusively features the work of Arab women who boldly refused to be silenced. The poems are excursions into their vibrant world whose humanity has been suppressed for centuries by religious and political bigotry. With poems in both English and Arabic, this remarkable anthology celebrates feminine wit and desire, and shows the significant contribution Arab women made to the literary tradition.

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1970s London: Young Michael runs past the railway arches and terraces of Vauxhall. Reaching the street on which he lives, he witnesses a young girl fall from a window, her sari floating down behind her. Her lifeless body lies crumpled on the ground. This incident marks the beginning of a period in which Michael's life threatens to unravel. From his sister's taunts to a series of house fires, police harassment, his parents' crumbling marriage and the realisation that the council intends to clear out the 'slum' he calls home, he learns to navigate his way through an array of obstacles, big and small. An extraordinary debut novel, Vauxhall tells a warm and hopeful story of a young boy and the city that surrounds him.

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These fascinating and diverse stories reflect the everyday concerns of Palestinians living under occupation. Writers who were children during the first intifada appear alongside those who remember the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. In this volume, Palestinian women offer compassionate, often critical, insight into their society in times of hardship and turmoil, yet look beyond to the warmth of human relations and the hope that better times will come. The contributors include authors from the occupied territories, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and writers from the Palestinian Diaspora.

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Features stories of dysfunctional marriages, abnormal goings on in rural outposts, urban alienation and kitchen sink dramas where the woman is no longer tied to the kitchen sink, but railing against past wrongs. This work also talks about various issues of domestic violence, child abuse, and abortion.

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A young Palestinian named Usama returns from working in the Gulf to support the resistance movement. His mission is to blow up buses transporting Palestinian workers into Israel. Shocked to discover that many of his fellow citizens have adjusted to life under military rule, Usama sets out to accomplish his mission ...with disastrous consequences. Wild Thorns is the first Arab novel to offer a glimpse of social and personal relations under Israeli occupation. Featuring unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, its uncompromising honesty and rich emotional core plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.

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The year is 1970, a period of crisis in the Arab world. Twenty-year-old Hisham has left home for the Saudi-Arabian capital Riyadh, where he's enrolled at university to study politics and economics. But this city has more than academic qualifications to offer a man of Hisham's mettle, and he soon discovers a strange underworld of alcohol and prostitution where fear, pleasure and politics merge. Here hospitals prove the richest cruising grounds, the desert is the place for illicit couplings, and now Hisham is spying on the bedroom activities of his next-door-neighbour's wife, who has taken to leaving her door ajar...Meanwhile, Hisham's disillusioned childhood friend Adnan abandons his artistic ambitions in favour of a loftier cause - Islamism. The two friends - who rapidly grow estranged - come to symbolise the opposite extremes of life in a repressive closed society.

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Inspired by timeless poems from around the world, Hassan Massoudy's calligraphy takes us on a visual journey through love in its many forms. Through his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours, this master calligrapher brings to life the words and wisdom of some of our greatest poets, from Ibn Zaydoun and Rumi to Kahlil Gibran, John Keats and Paul Eluard. Beautifully designed and illustrated throughout, Calligraphies of Love is the perfect gift for lovers, poets and dreamers.

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Egyptian cities and villages abound with an enormous wealth of khatt, or calligraphic script, ranging from casual scrawls and scribbles to elaborately-painted colourful murals. These historical and contemporary versions of urban lettering, varying in surface, medium and technique, adorn mosques, shop-fronts, houses, trucks, boats, schools, tuk-tuks and walls. They are records of human existence, documenting expressions of hope, fears, dreams and anxieties. Featuring beautiful and unique examples of these written expressions, Khatt is an extensive visual documentation of the found typography and calligraphy in Egypt, a calligraphy hub that possesses a rich tradition of education and production in the field. This timely volume records the traditional craftsmanship of hand-painted calligraphy, which is fast disappearing because of the digitization of the Arabic script. www.khattegypt.com/

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The prevailing belief among Muslims is that, because the Qur'an is the Word of God and God is eternal, it follows that His Word is also eternal. The belief is based on the postulate that the Word of God must be of the same nature as God Himself. Mahmoud Hussein refutes this by showing that it contradicts the very teachings of the Qur'an. Whereas God transcends time, His Word is inscribed within time. It is not a monologue, but a living exchange, through which God reveals to His Prophet different orders of truth, weaving together the absolute and the relative, the general and the particular, the eternal and the contingent. An international bestseller, Understanding the Qur'an today offers a new perspective on one of the world's most influential texts and adds an invaluable contribution to the debate on Islam and modernity.

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Bint Allah knows herself only as the Daughter of God. Born in a stifling male-dominated state, ruled by the Imam and his coterie of ministers, she dreams of one day reaching the top of a distant hill visible through the bars of the orphanage window. But Bint Allah's ambitions do not escape the attention of the Imam, who never feels secure no matter how well he protects himself. When the Imam falsely accuses Bint Allah of adultery and sentences her to death by stoning, he is not prepared for what happens next. A postmodern fantasia, this powerful and poetic novel is a call to arms against those who use religion as a weapon against women.

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Does Islam call for the oppression of women? The subjugation of women in many Muslim countries is often used as evidence of this, while many Muslims read the Qur'an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression and inequality. In this paradigm-shifting book, Asma Barlas argues that, far from supporting male privilege, the Qur'an actually affirms the complete equality of the sexes. Offering a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how, for centuries, Muslims have read patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures. In this seminal volume, she takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender and patriarchy, offering an egalitarian reading of Islam's most sacred scripture. This revised edition includes two new chapters, a new preface, and updates throughout.

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Examines the causes of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and also provides a reasoned approach as to what the future may hold. As the dust settled around the devastation of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, a host of questions emerged surrounding the attacks, the motives behind them and their future implications. In Two Hours that Shook the World Fred Halliday expands on the many socio-cultural, religious and political problems that have plagued the Middle East and Central Asia in the last half-century. Much has been written about 'global terrorism' and the need to eliminate it but also about the divide between East and West, the 'clash of civilisations'. Halliday dispels the idea that the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds are poised for conflict. He explains the causes and rise of Islamic fundamentalism, how terror became an instrument of political and military conflict, and why seemingly well-educated and sane individuals are taking drastic actions to voice their desperation. The burden of history is also invoked, as with the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the festering malaise at the heart of Middle Eastern consciousness and identity. While Halliday's book examines the causes of what has happened, it also provides a reasoned approach as to what the future may hold.

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Rembrandt, Vermeer et le Siecle d'or hollandais presente les pieces les plus remarquables de l'une des collections particulieres les plus importantes dans ce domaine, la collection Leiden, New York, ainsi qu'un choix d'/uvres provenant du Louvre. Ce catalogue d'exposition met en lumiere l'extraordinaire epanouissement de l'art au dix-septieme siecle, pendant la periode appelee Siecle d'or hollandais, marquee par une prosperite sans precedent. Pionniers de la nature morte, du realisme, du portrait, du paysage, de la peinture de genre, des artistes tels que Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris ou Frans Hals ont insuffle une vie nouvelle dans l'art hollandais, suscitant un reveil artistique national. Leurs /uvres reunies ici donnent un apercu du Siecle d'or hollandais, ce temps ou l'ouverture vers de nouveaux horizons engendra des formes d'expression artistique captivantes.

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