Download or read book Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie written by Malu Halasa and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2008-09-03 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most outrageous and exuberant lingerie in the world comes from a place youd probably never expect: Syria. Adorned with everything from faux fur, artificial flowers, and feathered birds to plastic toy cell phones, these intimates flash lights, play music, even vibrate. Well known across the Middle Eastin Syria the lingerie forms an important part of the folk tradition around trousseaus and weddingsit is openly displayed in the markets and souks. Authors Malu Halasa and Rana Salam have brought together a diverse and dramatic collection of photography and writing, including the voices of Syrian women, celebrating this little-known niche of fashion design in all its playful glory.
Download or read book Syria Speaks written by Malu Halasa and published by Saqi. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Syria, culture has become a critical line of defence against tyranny. Syria Speaks is a celebration of a people determined to reclaim their dignity, freedom and self-expression. It showcases the work of over fifty artists and writers who are challenging the culture of violence in Syria. Their literature, poems and songs, cartoons, political posters and photographs document and interpret the momentous changes that have shifted the frame of reality so drastically in Syria. Moving and inspiring, Syria Speaks is testament to the courage, creativity and imagination of the Syrian people. 'Syria Speaks is a remarkable achievement and a remarkable book – a wise, courageous, imaginative and beautiful response to all that is ugly in human behaviour. This extraordinary anthology gives a voice to those we may have forgotten, or whom we may classify as simply passive and silent victims. The people shown living, dreaming and speaking here are far more than victims and only silent if we refuse to hear them.' A.L. Kennedy 'An extraordinary collection, revealing a dynamic and exciting culture in painful transition – a culture where artists are really making a difference ... You need to read this book.' Brian Eno
Download or read book The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie written by Malu Halasa and published by Scalo Publishers. This book was released on 2006-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals a largely unknown and unexplored side of Arab culture and designone rarely glimpsed in todays geopolitical debates that characterize the region. In Damascus and Aleppo, approximately 200 companies vie for a highly competitive domestic lingerie market. The lingerie forms part of popular Syrian tradition surrounding marriage; if a groom does not buy the undergarments for his wife-to-be, then her mother will. Some lingerie designers resort to gadgetry (blinking lights or sound loops of pop music) or the sweet tooth (candy- or chocolate-encrusted panties), while others stick to classics like the thong panty featuring a bird embedded in a ring of fl uorescent pink boa feathers: called Ish Al Asfour (birds nest in Arabic)a kitsch interpretation of womens pubic hair. Malu Halasa describes her and Rana Salams visits with the designers, manufacturers, vendors, and consumers of these undergarments, shedding light on the social mores of Syrians and questioning Western preconceptions about Islam. Photographs by Gilbert Hage highlight the editors top 30 of lingerie styles discovered on their many trips to the souk in Damascus. Also in the book: self-portraits by the young Syrian artist Iman Ibrahim; a history of the Syrian textile industry and how dictatorship created a homegrown fashion empire; excerpts from fi lmmaker Noura Kevorkians journal, impressions and observations made while listening to Syrian women speak candidly about their lives, leading her to further investigate the relationship between lingerie and polygamy; and an interview with one of Syrias reformers, the author, publisher and activist Ammar Abdulhamid, among much more depicted within Rana Salams graphic collection of Arabic design. Texts by Malu Halasa, Noura Kevorkian, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, interview with Ammar Abdulhamid, and photographs by Gilbert Hage, Iman Ibrahim, and Issa Touma among others.
Download or read book No Turning Back Life Loss and Hope in Wartime Syria written by Rania Abouzeid and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Rania Abouzeid has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict, daring to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story.” —Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Forever War Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid dissects the tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict through the dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered country. Hailed by critics, No Turning Back masterfully “[weaves] together the lives of protestors, victims, and remorseless killers at the center of this century’s most appalling human tragedy” (Robert F. Worth). Based on more than five years of fearless, clandestine reporting, No Turning Back brings readers deep inside Bashar al-Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of the Islamic State. An utterly engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters, No Turning Back shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s greatest humanitarian disasters. Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award for the best non-fiction book on international affairs and a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize.
Download or read book Excellent Daughters written by Katherine Zoepf and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur’anic schools—and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective. And, in 2011, young women helped to lead antigovernment protests in the Arab Spring. But their voices have not been heard. Their stories have not been told. In Syria, before its civil war, she documents a complex society in the midst of soul searching about its place in the world and about the role of women. In Lebanon, she documents a country that on the surface is freer than other Arab nations but whose women must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. In Abu Dhabi, Zoepf reports on a generation of Arab women who’ve found freedom in work outside the home. In Saudi Arabia she chronicles driving protests and women entering the retail industry for the first time. In the aftermath of Tahrir Square, she examines the crucial role of women in Egypt's popular uprising. Deeply informed, heartfelt, and urgent, Excellent Daughters brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies—from 9/11 to Tahrir Square to the rise of ISIS—and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change.
Download or read book Sophie s World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Before she knows it she is enrolled in a correspondence course with a mysterious philosopher. Thus begins Jostein Gaarder's unique novel, which is not only a mystery, but also a complete and entertaining history of philosophy.
Download or read book We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled written by Wendy Pearlman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONG-LISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL Reminiscent of the work of Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, an astonishing collection of intimate wartime testimonies and poetic fragments from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight. Against the backdrop of the wave of demonstrations known as the Arab Spring, in 2011 hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom, democracy and human rights. The government’s ferocious response, and the refusal of the demonstrators to back down, sparked a brutal civil war that over the past five years has escalated into the worst humanitarian catastrophe of our times. Yet despite all the reporting, the video, and the wrenching photography, the stories of ordinary Syrians remain unheard, while the stories told about them have been distorted by broad brush dread and political expediency. This fierce and poignant collection changes that. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled is a breathtaking mosaic of first-hand testimonials from the frontlines. Some of the testimonies are several pages long, eloquent narratives that could stand alone as short stories; others are only a few sentences, poetic and aphoristic. Together, they cohere into an unforgettable chronicle that is not only a testament to the power of storytelling but to the strength of those who face darkness with hope, courage, and moral conviction.
Download or read book Blown to Bits written by Harold Abelson and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 2008 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.
Download or read book The Hakawati written by Rabih Alameddine and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps. Through Osama, we also enter the world of the contemporary Lebanese men and women whose stories tell a larger, heartbreaking tale of seemingly endless war, conflicted identity, and survival. With The Hakawati, Rabih Alameddine has given us an Arabian Nights for this century.
Download or read book Crimes Committed by Terrorist Groups written by Mark S. Hamm and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.
Download or read book Transit Tehran written by Malu Halasa and published by Garnet Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like other international cities, Tehran is filled with the religious, the irreligious and the indifferent. This work provides essays and picture stories to bring the city to life. It celebrates the country's long tradition of artistic and cultural resistance that has influenced young Iranians.
Download or read book The God of Small Things written by Arundhati Roy and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved debut novel about an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969, from the author of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s modern classic is equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevocably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.
Download or read book Portnoy s Complaint written by Philip Roth and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1994-09-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The groundbreaking novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral that originally propelled its author to literary stardom: told in a continuous monologue from patient to psychoanalyst, this masterpiece draws us into the turbulent mind of one lust-ridden young Jewish bachelor named Alexander Portnoy. "Deliciously funny...absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious...a brilliantly vivid reading experience." —The New York Times Book Review "Touching as well as hilariously lewd.... Roth is vibrantly talented." —New York Review of Books Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.
Download or read book Social Media in an English Village written by Daniel Miller and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniel Miller spent 18 months undertaking an ethnographic study with the residents of an English village, tracking their use of the different social media platforms. Following his study, he argues that a focus on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram does little to explain what we post on social media. Instead, the key to understanding how people in an English village use social media is to appreciate just how ‘English’ their usage has become. He introduces the ‘Goldilocks Strategy’: how villagers use social media to calibrate precise levels of interaction ensuring that each relationship is neither too cold nor too hot, but ‘just right’.
Download or read book Unreal Estate written by Michael Gross and published by Broadway. This book was released on 2011 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of lucrative real estate in Los Angeles shares the lesser-known contributions of a range of figures from Douglas Fairbanks and Marilyn Monroe to Howard Hughes and Ronald Reagan. By the best-selling author of Rogues' Gallery.
Download or read book Main Street written by Sinclair Lewis and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which she’s exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicott’s home town. Carol, inspired by big-city ideas, soon begins chafing at the seeming quaintness and even backwardness of the townsfolk, and their conservative, self-satisfied way of life. She struggles to try to reform the town in her image, while finding meaning in the seeming cultural desert she’s found herself in and in her increasingly cold marriage. Gopher Prairie is a detailed, satirical take on small-town American life, modeled after Sauk Centre, the town in which Lewis himself grew up. The town is fully realized, with generations of inhabitants interacting in a complex web of village society. Its bitingly satirical portrayal made Main Street highly acclaimed by its contemporaries, though many thought the satirical take was perhaps a bit too dark and hopeless. The book’s celebration and condemnation of small town life make it a candidate for the title of the Great American Novel. Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the decision was overturned by the prize’s Board of Trustees and awarded instead to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. When Lewis went on to win the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, he declined it—with the New York Times reporting that he did so because he was still angry at the Pulitzers for being denied the prize for Main Street. Despite the book’s snub at the Pulitzers, Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, with Main Street being cited as one of the reasons for his win.
Download or read book God Save the Child written by Robert B. Parker and published by Dell. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser series of crime thrillers - Book 2 in the series - Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away -- until the comic strip ransom note arrives. It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture -- an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends like Vic Harroway, body builder. Mr. Muscle is Spenser's only lead and he isn't talking...except with his fists. But when push comes to shove, when a boy's life is on the line, Spenser can speak that language too. "A brillant, and cynical, comic tragedy or tragic comedy of manners. Long may Parker wave." -- Los Angeles Times
