Download or read book Chronicle in Stone written by Ismail Kadare and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy’s eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty—as well as the simple pleasures of life. Evacuating to the countryside, he expects to find an ideal world full of extraordinary things, but discovers instead an archaic backwater where a severed arm becomes a talisman and deflowered girls mysteriously vanish. Woven between the chapters of the boy’s story are tantalizing fragments of the city’s history. As the devastation mounts, the fragments lose coherence, and we perceive firsthand how the violence of war destroys more than just buildings and bridges.

Download or read book Chronicle in Stone written by Ismail Kadare and published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a seamless mosaic of dreams and games, a young boy reflects on events as his hometown in Albania falls to a series of invaders. Amid floods and bombings, his own innocence and wonder are lost forever in the madness and brutality of the Second World War. A disturbing mix of tragedy and comedy, politics and sexuality, Chronicle in Stone is a fascinating masterpiece about what it means to grow up in a turbulent world.

Download or read book The Fall of the Stone City written by Ismail Kadare and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013. In September 1943, Nazi troops advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokastr, Albania. The very next day, the Germans vanish without a trace. As the townsfolk wonder if they might have dreamt the events of the previous night, rumours circulate of a childhood friendship between a local dignitary and the invading Nazi Colonel, a reunion in the town square and a fateful dinner party that would transform twentieth-century Europe. A captivating novel of resistance in a dictatorship, and steeped in Albanian folklore, The Fall of the Stone City shows Kadare at the height of his powers.

Download or read book The Successor written by Ismail Kadare and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This, Ismail Kadare's most recent novel, is a fictional inquiry into the still-unexplained death of Mehmet Shehu, the man who for decades was the designated Number Two political figure in Communist dictator Enver Hoxha's ironfisted and increasingly paranoid regime." "On the night of December 13, 1981, the so-called Successor was shot dead, sometime between midnight and early morning. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? This is the burning question. There are a number of potential murderers: the architect in charge of renovating the Successor's new quarters, who knew of the secret underground passage to his home; a rising political figure, Adrian Hasobeu, who if the current successor were to disappear would surely be named Number Two; the dictator himself - known to his countrymen as the Guide - now ailing and almost blind, unable to countenance even the idea of being replaced; and, incredibly, the Successor's wife." "The Successor combines a tantalizing mystery with a historical novel (Who killed Mehmet Shehu?), a psychological examination (How do you live in a world where nothing is sure?), and an analysis of a dictatorship so repressive that its followers treat it as a religious faith, where love, and indeed all personal relations, are subject to the whims and demands of the state."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Under the Mountain Wall written by Peter Matthiessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1987-01-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable firsthand view of a lost culture in all its simplicity and violence by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927 to 2014), author of the National Book Award–winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise. In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea live the Kurelu, a Stone Age tribe that survived into the twentieth century. Peter Matthiessen visited the Kurelu with the Harvard-Peabody Expedition in 1961 and wrote Under the Mountain Wall as an account not of the expedition, but of the great warrior Weaklekek, the swineherd Tukum, U-mue and his family, and the boy Weake, killed in a surprise raid. Matthiessen observes these people in their timeless rhythm of work and play and war, of gardening and wood gathering, feasts and funerals, pig stealing and ambushes. Drawing on his great skills as a naturalist and novelist, Matthiessen offers an exceptional account of an ancient culture on the brink of incalculable change.

Download or read book A Stone Sat Still written by and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this moving companion to the Caldecott Honor–winning They All Saw a Cat, Brendan Wenzel tells the story of a seemingly ordinary stone. But it isn't just a stone—to the animals that use it, it's a resting place, a kitchen, a safe haven...even an entire world. With stunning illustrations in cut paper, pencil, collage, and paint, and soothing rhythms that invite reading aloud, A Stone Sat Still is a gorgeous exploration of perspective, perception, sensory experience, color, size, function, and time, with an underlying environmental message that is timely and poignant. Once again Wenzel shows himself to be a master of the picture book form.

Download or read book Untitled Rothfuss 3 Of 3 written by Patrick Rothfuss and published by Gollancz. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third in 'The Kingkiller Chronicle' series of fantasy novels by Patrick Rothfuss.

Download or read book Son of Stone written by Stuart Woods and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stone Barrington is faced with the biggest challenge of his life as Stuart Woods’s #1 New York Times bestselling series continues... After an eventful trip to Bel-Air and a reunion with his sophisticated (and very wealthy) former love, Arrington Calder, confirmed bachelor Stone Barrington is looking to stay in New York and cash in on his partnership at Woodman & Weld. Not only is he a rainmaker of one of the riches white-shoe law firms in town, he’s back in his element. Manhattan, after all, is his home, and no one is better than Stone at navigating both its shadowy underworlds and its chic society. But Arrington has other plans for Stone, and his life is about to take a turn he never imagined...

Download or read book The Accident written by Ismail Kadare and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the taxi crash on the autobahn in Vienna? Who exactly were Besfort Y and Rovena, the mysterious couple who died after being flung from the backseat? How was Besfort connected to the war in the Balkans? And why was his affair with Rovena clouded in jealousy and mistrust? Who wanted them dead? This is the story of the last forty weeks of their lives - a fever dream where love and obsession collide.

Download or read book The Traitor s Niche written by Ismail Kadare and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kadare is inevitably linked to Orwell and Kundera, but he is a far deeper ironist than the first, and a better storyteller than the second. He is a compellingly ironic storyteller because he so brilliantly summons details that explode with symbolic reality." —The New Yorker At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, in the main square of Constantinople, a niche is carved into ancient stone. Here, the sultan displays the severed heads of his adversaries. People flock to see the latest head and gossip about the state of the empire: the province of Albania is demanding independence again, and the niche awaits a new trophy . . . Tundj Hata, the imperial courier, is charged with transporting heads to the capital—a task he relishes and performs with fervor. As he travels through obscure and impoverished territories, he makes money from illicit side–shows, offering villagers the spectacle of death. The head of the rebellious Albanian governor would fetch a very high price indeed. The Traitor's Niche is a surreal tale of tyranny and rebellion, in a land where armies carry scarecrows, state officials ban entire languages, and the act of forgetting is more complicated than remembering. Long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize "The name of the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare regularly comes up at Nobel Prize time, and he is still a good bet to win it one of these days . . . He is seemingly incapable of writing a book that fails to be interesting." —The New York Times

Download or read book The Palace of Dreams written by Ismail Kadare and published by Arcade Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When it was first published in the author's native country, THE PALACE OF DREAMS was immediately banned. The novel revolves around a secret ministry whose task is not just to spy on its citizens, but to collect and interpret their dreams. An entire nation's unconscious is thus tapped and meticulously laid bare in the form of images and symbols of the dreaming mind.

Download or read book Chronicles of the Sacred Mountain written by Perry F. Stone and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The International Novel written by Annabel Patterson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annabel Patterson here turns her well-known concern with political history in early modern England into an engine for investigating our own era and a much wider terrain. The focus of this book is, broadly, nationalism and internationalism today, approached not theoretically but through the lens of fiction. Novels are uniquely capable of dealing with abstract problems by embodying them in the experience of persons, thereby rendering them more “real.” Patterson takes twelve novels from (almost) all over the world: India, Africa, Turkey, Crete, the Balkans, Palestine, Afghanistan, South America, and Mexico, novels which illustrate the dire effects of some of the following: imperialism, partition, annexation, ethnic and religious strife, boundaries redrawn by aggression, the virus of dictatorships, the vulnerability of small countries, and the meddling of the Great Powers. All are highly instructive, and excellent reads.

Download or read book The Fire Chronicle written by John Stephens and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the tumultuous events of last winter, Kate, Michael, and Emma long to continue the hunt for their missing parents. But they themselves are now in great danger, and so the wizard Stanislaus Pym hides the children at the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans. There, he says, they will be safe. How wrong he is. The children are soon discovered by their enemies, and a frantic chase sends Kate a hundred years into the past, to a perilous, enchanted New York City. Searching for a way back to her brother and sister, she meets a mysterious boy whose fate is intricately—and dangerously—tied to her own. Meanwhile, Michael and Emma have set off to find the second of the Books of Beginning. A series of clues leads them into a hidden world where they must brave harsh polar storms, track down an ancient order of warriors, and confront terrible monsters. Will Michael and Emma find the legendary book of fire—and master its powers—before Kate is lost to them forever? Exciting, suspenseful, and brimming with humor and heart, the next installment of the bestselling Books of Beginning trilogy will lead Kate, Michael, and Emma closer to their family—and to the magic that could save, or destroy, them all.

Download or read book In My Hands Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer written by Irene Gut Opdyke and published by Ember. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "No matter how many Holocaust stories one has read, this one is a must, for its impact is so powerful."--School Library Journal, starred I did not ask myself, "Should I do this?" but "How will I do this?" Through this intimate and compelling memoir, we are witness to the growth of a hero. Much like The Diary of Anne Frank, In My Hands has become a profound testament to individual courage. You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defierof the SS and the Nazis, all at once. When the war began, Irene Gut was just seventeen: a student nurse, a Polish patriot, a good Catholic girl. Forced to work in a German officiers' dining hall, she learns how to fight back. One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence. Irene eavesdropped on the German's plans. She smuggled people out of the work camp. And she hid twelve Jews in the basement of a Nazi major's home. To deliver her friends from evil, this young woman did whatever it took--even the impossible.

Download or read book The File on H written by Ismail Kadare and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-1930s, two Irish Americans travel to the Albanian highlands with an early model of a marvelous invention, the tape recorder. Their mission? To discover how Homer could have composed works as brilliant and as long as The Iliad and The Odyssey without ever putting pen to paper. The answer, they believe, can be found only in Albania, the last remaining habitat of the oral epic. But immediately upon their arrival, the scholars’ seemingly arcane research excites suspicion and puts them at the center of ethnic strife in the Balkans. Mistaken for foreign spies, they are placed under surveillance and are dogged by gossip and intrigue. It isn’t until a fierce-eyed monk from the Serbian side of the mountains makes his appearance that the scholars glimpse the full political import of their search for the key to the Homeric question.

Download or read book Children of the Stone written by Sandy Tolan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children of the Stone is the unlikely story of Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a boy from a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah who confronts the occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream a reality. That dream is of a music school in the midst of a refugee camp in Ramallah, a school that will transform the lives of thousands of children through music. Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician and music director of La Scala in Milan and the Berlin Opera, is among those who help Ramzi realize his dream. He has played with Ramzi frequently, at chamber music concerts in Al-Kamandjati, the school Ramzi worked so hard to build, and in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that Barenboim founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Children of the Stone is a story about music, freedom and conflict; determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the past and future of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children see new possibilities for their lives. Above all, Children of the Stone chronicles the journey of Ramzi Aburedwan, and how he worked against the odds to create something lasting and beautiful in a war-torn land.