Download or read book Disoriental written by Négar Djavadi and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “A multigenerational epic of the Sadr family’s life in Iran and their eventual exile . . . Full of surprises” (The Globe and Mail). Winner of the 2019 Albertine Prize and Lambda Literary Award Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself, as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them. It is Kimiâ herself—punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”—who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel, recipient of numerous literary honors. “Where initially Disoriental seems focused on Kimiâ’s father and his pro-democracy activism—first against the Shah, then the Ayatollah Khomeini—this is truly Kimiâ’s story of disorientation—national, familial and sexual—and finding herself again.” —The Globe and Mail “A tour de force of storytelling . . . Djavadi deftly weaves together the history of 20th-century Iran [and] the spellbinding chronicle of her own ancestors. . . . Perfectly blends historical fact with contemporary themes.” —Library Journal “Riveting . . . Djavadi is an immensely gifted storyteller, and Kimiâ’s tale is especially compelling.” —Booklist (starred review) “A wonder and a pleasure to read.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances WINNER 2019 ALBERTINE PRIZE WINNER 2019 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST 2019 CLMP FIRECRACKER AWARD FINALIST 2019 BEST TRANSLATED BOOK AWARD WINNER LE PRIX DU ROMAN NEWS WINNER STYLE PRIZE WINNER 2016 LIRE BEST DEBUT NOVEL WINNER LA PORTE DORÉE PRIZE ONE OF THE GLOBE & MAIL’S BEST BOOKS OF 2018

Download or read book Life Only Better written by Anna Gavalda and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two lost young Parisians discover new paths for their lives in this charming pair of novellas by the international-bestselling author of Billie. Twenty-four-year-old Mathilde has abandoned her studies in art history for a job leaving anonymous negative comments on websites. One day she loses her bag in a café—a bag that happens to contain ten thousand Euros. When an unknown man returns it to her a week later, Mathilde becomes obsessed with the mysterious encounter. Twenty-six-year-old Yann works as a sales assistant in a home appliances store while he waits for better days to come. He wouldn’t say he is unhappy. But sometimes, late at night, when he is crossing a bridge over the River Seine, he imagines jumping. One day he does a favor for one of his neighbors and is asked to stay for dinner as thanks. The following morning Yann throws caution to the wind and decides to change his life entirely. These two novellas by bestselling author Anna Gavalda are among her most moving and inspiring. Life, Only Better is a touching, cleverly crafted book about choices and their consequences.

Download or read book The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree written by Shokoofeh Azar and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grieving family flees Tehran after the Islamic Revolution in this novel of “magical realism with a Persian twist” translated from Farsi (The Guardian, UK). When their home in Tehran is burned to the ground by zealots, killing their thirteen-year-old daughter Bahar, a once-prominent family flees to a small village. There, they hope to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Iranian novelist Shokoofeh Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime. “[Azar’s] book is a great journey. It moves places and it moves us as readers, in an emotional and intellectual sense.” —Robert Wood, The Los Angeles Review of Books

Download or read book The Book Collectors of Daraya written by Delphine Minoui and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Book of Tehran written by Fereshteh Ahmadi and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. For the capital city of one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East, its literary output is rarely acknowledged in the West. This unique celebration of its writing brings together ten stories exploring the tensions and pressures that make the city what it is: tensions between the public and the private, pressures from without – judgemental neighbours, the expectations of religion and society – and from within – family feuds, thwarted ambitions, destructive relationships. The psychological impact of these pressures manifests in different ways: a man wakes up to find a stranger relaxing in his living room and starts to wonder if this is his house at all; a struggling writer decides only when his girlfriend breaks his heart will his work have depth... In all cases, coping with these pressures leads us, the readers, into an unexpected trove of cultural treasures – like the burglar, in one story, descending into the basement of a mysterious antique collector’s house – treasures of which we, in the West, are almost wholly ignorant. Translated by: Sara Khalili, Sholeh Wolpé, Alireza Abiz, Caroline Croskery, Farzaneh Doosti, Shahab Vaezzadeh, Niloufar Talebi, Lida Nosrati, Susan Niazi and Poupeh Missaghi. Foreword by Orkideh Behrouzan. Developed in partnership with Visiting Arts. 'The aesthetic sensibility of Iranian culture appears, to the West, as mainly pre-modern, if not actually anti-modern... The fiction showcased in The Book of Tehran is a welcome corrective to this tendency... These stories feel decidedly contemporary in style and subject matter alike, with their protagonists' inner lives and interpersonal relationships at the fore.' - The Times Literary Supplement 'Fiction exploring the interior life of contemporary Iranians is not well represented in translations readily available in the West. The Book of Tehran aims to begin to redress the shortage...' - Asian Review of Books

Download or read book Silence Is My Mother Tongue written by Sulaiman Addonia and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice. With this cast of complex, beautifully drawn characters, Sulaiman Addonia details the textures and rhythms of everyday life in a refugee camp, and questions what it means to be an individual when one has lost all that makes a home or a future. Intimate and subversive, Silence Is My Mother Tongue dissects the ways society wages war on women and explores the stories we must tell to survive in a broken, inhospitable environment.

Download or read book The Book of Tokyo written by Hideo Furukawa and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’

Download or read book Armand V written by Dag Solstad and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Directions proudly introduces two novels in English by the Norwegian master, who is “without question, Norway’s bravest, most intelligent novelist” (Per Petterson) Armand is a diplomat rising through the ranks of the Norwegian foreign office, but he’s caught between his public duty to support foreign wars in the Middle East and his private disdain for Western intervention. He hides behind knowing, ironic statements, which no one grasps and which change nothing. Armand’s son joins the Norwegian SAS to fight in the Middle East, despite being specifically warned against such a move by his father, and this leads to catastrophic, heartbreaking consequences. Told exclusively in footnotes to an unwritten book, this is Solstad’s radically unconventional novel about how we experience the passing of time: how it fragments, drifts, quickens, and how single moments can define a life.

Download or read book The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls written by Mona Eltahawy and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold and uncompromising feminist manifesto that shows women and girls how to defy, disrupt, and destroy the patriarchy by embracing the qualities they’ve been trained to avoid. Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the “seven necessary sins” that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary “sins” that women and girls require to erupt. Eltahawy knows that the patriarchy is alive and well, and she is fed the hell up: Sexually assaulted during hajj at the age of fifteen. Groped on the dance floor of a night club in Montreal at fifty. Countless other injustices in the years between. Illuminating her call to action are stories of activists and ordinary women around the world—from South Africa to China, Nigeria to India, Bosnia to Egypt—who are tapping into their inner fury and crossing the lines of race, class, faith, and gender that make it so hard for marginalized women to be heard. Rather than teaching women and girls to survive the poisonous system they have found themselves in, Eltahawy arms them to dismantle it. Brilliant, bold, and energetic, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a manifesto for all feminists in the fight against patriarchy.

Download or read book The Impossible Revolution written by Yassin al-Haj Saleh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a leftist dissident who spent sixteen years as a political prisoner and now lives in exile. He describes with precision and fervour the events that led to Syria's 2011 uprising, the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war, and the 'three monsters' Saleh sees 'treading on Syria's corpse': the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and Russia and the US. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assad's army is now battling religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory, democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is beset on all sides. The Impossible Revolution is a powerful, compelling critique of Syria's catastrophic war, which has profoundly reshaped the lives of millions of Syrians.

Download or read book What My Mother and I Don t Talk About written by Michele Filgate and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

Download or read book The Book of Venice written by Elisabetta Baldisserotto and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate – the way so many of the city’s residents already have – to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with ‘global pilgrims’... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the ‘impossibly beautiful’, frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year – a city about which, Henry James once wrote, ‘there is nothing new to be said.’ Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

Download or read book Moon Brow written by Shahriar Mandanipour and published by Restless Books. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Before he enlisted as a soldier in the Iran-Iraq war and disappeared, Amir Yamini was a carefree playboy whose only concerns were seducing women and riling his religious family. Five years later, his mother and sister Reyhaneh find him in a mental hospital for shell-shocked soldiers, his left arm and most of his memory lost. Amir is haunted by the vision of a mysterious woman whose face he cannot see-- the crescent moon on her forehead shines too brightly. He names her Moon Brow. Back home in Tehran, the prodigal son is both hailed as a living martyr to the cause of Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolution and confined as a dangerous madman. His sense of humor, if not his sanity, intact, Amir cajoles Reyhaneh into helping him escape the garden walls to search for Moon Brow. Piecing together the puzzle of his past, Amir decides theres only one solution: he must return to the battlefield and find the remains of his severed arm-- and discover its secrets"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book Mitz written by Sigrid Nunez and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This "tender biography of a sickly marmoset that was adopted by Leonard Woolf and became a fixture of Bloomsbury society" (The New York Times) is an intimate portrait of the life and marriage of Leonard and Virginia Woolf from a National Book Award-winning author. In 1934, a "sickly pathetic marmoset” named Mitz came into the care of Leonard Woolf. After he nursed her back to health, she became a ubiquitous presence in Bloomsbury society. Moving with Leonard and Virginia Woolf between their homes in London and Sussex, she developed her own special relationship with each of them, as well as with their pet cocker spaniels and with various members of the Woolfs’ circle, among them T. S. Eliot and Vita Sackville-West. Mitz also helped the Woolfs escape a close call with Nazis during a trip through Germany just before the outbreak of World War II. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, and other archival documents, Nunez reconstructs Mitz’s life against the background of Bloomsbury’s twilight years. This tender and imaginative mock biography offers a striking look at the lives of writers and artists shadowed by war, death, and mental breakdown, and at the solace and amusement inspired by its tiny subject--and this new edition includes an afterword by Peter Cameron and a never-before-published letter about Mitz by Nigel Nicolson. “In short, glistening sentences that refract the larger world, Ms. Nunez describes the appealingly eccentric, fiercely intelligent Woolfs during a darkening time.” —The Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Bitch Planet Vol 2 President Bitch written by Kelly Sue Deconnick and published by Image Comics. This book was released on 2017-05-31 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleanor's gambit: The "PRESIDENT BITCH" arc concludes. BITCH PLANET will return in August.

Download or read book What s Left of the Night written by Ersi Sotiropoulos and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lyrical and erotic reimagining of the gay Greek-Alexandrian poet C.P. Cavafy’s three-day trip to Paris in 1897 . . . dizzying, fevered and beautiful.” —The Millions Winner of the 2019 National Translation Award In June 1897, the young Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris on the last stop of a long European tour, a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic inclination. With this lyrical novel, tinged with a hallucinatory eroticism that unfolds over three unforgettable days, celebrated Greek author Ersi Sotiropoulos depicts Cavafy in the midst of a journey of self-discovery across a continent on the brink of massive change. He is by turns exhilarated and tormented by his homosexuality; the Greek-Turkish War has ended in Greece’s defeat and humiliation; France is torn by the Dreyfus Affair, and Cavafy’s native Alexandria has surrendered to the indolent rhythms of the East. A stunning portrait of a budding author—before he became one of the 20th century’s greatest poets—that illuminates the complex relationship of art, life, and the erotic desires that trigger creativity. “A perfect book.” ―Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story “The novel is as sen­sual as it is eru­dite, a stir­ringly in­ti­mate ex­plo­ration of the pri­vate, earthy place where cre­ation commences.” ―The Wall Street Journal “A remarkable novel . . . both a radiant work of the imagination and a fitting tribute to the greatest Greek poet of the twentieth century.” ―The Times Literary Supplement “Engaging and original . . . powerfully erotic . . . This is a hallucinatory work of art, in every sense.” ―The Literary Review

Download or read book Body Grammar written by Jules Ohman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A coming-of-age queer love story set in the glamorous but grueling world of international modeling—a "terrific debut ... roiling with deep questions of identity and art, love, and the irrepressible need for meaning in life" (Jess Walter, bestselling author of The Cold Millions) By the time Lou turns eighteen, modeling agents across Portland have scouted her for her striking androgynous look. Lou has no interest in fashion or being in the spotlight. She prefers to take photographs, especially of Ivy, her close friend and secret crush. But when a hike ends in a tragic accident, Lou finds herself lost and ridden with guilt. Determined to find a purpose, Lou moves to New York and steps into the dizzying world of international fashion shows, haute couture, and editorial shoots. It’s a whirlwind of learning how to walk and how to command a body she’s never felt at ease in. But in the limelight, Lou begins to fear that she’s losing her identity—as an individual, as an artist, and as a person still in love with the girl she left behind. A sharply observed and intimate story of grief and healing, doubt and self-acceptance set against the hyper-image-conscious industry of modeling and high fashion, Body Grammar shines with the anxieties of finding your place in the world and the heartbreaking beauty of pursuing love. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL