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Showing 1 - 19 of 19 items
By Aisha Saeed, S. K. Ali. 2020
A joyous short story collection by and about Muslims, edited by New York Times bestselling author Aisha Saeed and Morris…
finalist S. K. Ali. Once Upon an Eid is a collection of short stories that showcases the most brilliant Muslim voices writing today, all about the most joyful holiday of the year: Eid! Eid: The short, single-syllable word conjures up a variety of feelings and memories for Muslims. Maybe it's waking up to the sound of frying samosas or the comfort of bean pie, maybe it's the pleasure of putting on a new outfit for Eid prayers, or maybe it's the gift giving and holiday parties to come that day. Whatever it may be, for those who cherish this day of celebration, the emotional responses may be summed up in another short and sweet word: joy.By Claire Rudolf Murphy. 2003
Tales of mothers, daughters, believers, and seekers, based on verses from the Bible and Qur'an. In "Return to Hadassah" Esther…
draws courage from her Jewish faith to reveal her true identity and ask her husband the king to save her people. For junior and senior high readers. 2003By Khaleel Muhammad. 2012
In this exciting new series, a group of Muslim kids come together to clean up an old Jewish man's house…
before his wife returns home from a major operation. But with time running out and a bigger mess than they had imagined . . . can they succeed?Khaleel Muhammad is a well-known singer of nasheeds (Islamic songs). He has also written and produced his own successful audio adventure, The Adventures of Hakim. This is his first children's book. Khaleel lives in London, England.By Andrew Krivak. 2011
The Sojourn, winner of the Chautauqua Prize and finalist for the National Book Award, is the story of Jozef Vinich,…
who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a family tragedy and returns with his father to an impoverished shepherd's life in rural Austria-Hungary. When World War One comes, Jozef joins his adopted brother as a sharpshooter in the Kaiser's army, surviving a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy.A stirring tale of brotherhood, coming-of-age, and survival, that was inspired by the author's own family history, this novel evokes a time when Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, and Germans fought on the same side while divided by language, ethnicity, and social class in the most brutal war to date. It is also a poignant tale of fathers and sons, addressing the great immigration to America and the desire to live the American dream amidst the unfolding tragedy in Europe.The Sojourn is Andrew Krivak's first novel. Krivak is also the author of A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, a memoir about his eight years in the Jesuit Order, and editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902-1912, which received the Louis L. Martz Prize. The grandson of Slovak immigrants, Krivak grew up in Pennsylvania, has lived in London, and now lives with his wife and three children in Massachusetts where he teaches in the Honors Program at Boston College.By Fawzia Gilani, Shireen Adams. 2013
Involving the power of a djinn, poisoned dates, seven dwarf sisters-in-faith, and a mysterious old peddler woman in the woods…
wearing a face veil, this lyrically told story offers a unique twist on this fairy tale, whilst keeping the classic much-loved story intact, including a hateful and vain stepmother, a considerate huntsman, and a charming prince.Set in the heady snow-strewn woodlands of Anatolia by the illustrator Shireen Adams, this tale of flight, friendship, and forgiveness is richly detailed and beautifully brought to life.Snow White is the second book in the Islamic Fairy Tales series, which looks to offer meaningful and faithful variants of these popular worldwide stories.Fawzia Gilani has worked as a teacher, librarian, and school principal in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada since 1993. She is the author of thirty children's books, mostly on the topic of Eid.By Aline Havard. 2019
Excerpt: "If the young people who read this last story of Lucy Gordon’s army life are disappointed that the end…
of the war does not bring her home to America they cannot possibly be as disappointed as she herself. She hoped that the war had really finished with the armistice but, like lots of us, she found that there was a great deal left to do that she had not counted upon. Peace was slow in coming, and the American army overseas had its hands as full trying to hasten it as all America on this side had, and still has, in trying to get back to peace-time ways. The tangle of affairs in war-swept Europe is more than Lucy can understand, though she sees a little of that great unrest, and catches a glimpse of its hidden dangers, even in the Home Sector. She does what she can to help, generously, and, though peace is not come and America is still distant, she and Bob and all the Gordon family find happiness together, and look forward with brave confidence to the glorious future of the dear country to which they will before long be homeward bound."By Aline Havard. 2019
Excerpt from Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Bob: The war is as yet only beginning for Lucy Gor don, and the…
old, pleasant times are just ending, but, like every other girl in America, she is trying hard to find the courage and cheerfulness which have never yet been wanting in our Service and which are going to help America to win.By Mark Budman. 2008
This semi–autobiographical debut novel chronicles the life of Alex, born in Siberia in 1950, and his dreams of becoming a…
writer and of meeting Annie, his distant American cousin. As a child, Alex observes a group of foreign tourists do something that non–drunk Soviet adults seldom do: they laugh. Alex yearns to become one of them—a free and happy foreigner. Those aspirations quickly fade as Alex begins to encounter the absurdities and constraints of living in a society where conformity is institutionalized. Hilarious and sometimes sobering, the book's short chapters chronicle making it through the army, mastering the English language, sex, and meeting the girl of his dreams. In 1980, Alex and his young family finally get the chance to move to America. There he realizes that he is finally a foreigner—not the happy foreigner of his dream, but an alien. Ultimately, Alex finds his own place in the world, despite the fact that having the right "to vote for an elephant or an ass" does not necessarily guarantee self–fulfillment.By Elias Khoury. 2007
Meelya's dreams are her refuge from events that threaten her or escape her understanding. She leaves her home in Lebanon…
to live in Nazareth with her Palestinian husband, but Mansour - an older man who fell for her beauty - is frustrated by her spiritual absence.When Mansour's brother's death demands a move to Jaffa - the centre of early tensions between Jewish settlers and displaced Palestinians - Meelya withdraws further into the realm of dreams. Expecting the birth of their son, Mansour can only watch as she cuts loose from the physical world.Over three traumatic nights, past, present and future merge seamlessly into a series of visions that draw the reader towards a conclusion that is powerfully symbolic of the ongoing troubles in the Middle East.By Muhsin Al-Ramli. 2016
One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "A contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No…
author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting". Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ. On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated.How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell.It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle.It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of The President's Gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.Translated from the Arabic by Luke LeafgrenBy Muhsin Al-Ramli. 2017
One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "A contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No…
author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting". Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ. On the third day of Ramadan, the village wakes to find the severed heads of nine of its sons stacked in banana crates by the bus stop.One of them belonged to one of the most wanted men in Iraq, known to his friends as Ibrahim the Fated.How did this good and humble man earn the enmity of so many? What did he do to deserve such a death?The answer lies in his lifelong friendship with Abdullah Kafka and Tariq the Befuddled, who each have their own remarkable stories to tell.It lies on the scarred, irradiated battlefields of the Gulf War and in the ashes of a revolution strangled in its cradle.It lies in the steadfast love of his wife and the festering scorn of his daughter.And, above all, it lies behind the locked gates of The President's Gardens, buried alongside the countless victims of a pitiless reign of terror.Translated from the Arabic by Luke LeafgrenBy Bernie Power. 2021
In Storytellers: Bringing Muslims Home, Bernie Power shows how the art of storytelling can be used to answer the questions…
that Muslims ask about the Christian faith. He does so by telling us a story within a story, which points to the greatest story ever told: the story of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.In Bernie’s novel, we are introduced to a young Christian couple: Tom, a teacher, and his wife Hanna, a doctor, who travel to the Middle East to live and work with the Yemeni people. Together they face challenges, make friends and answer questions about their faith using the method most favoured by both Arabic cultures and Jesus himself – stories.Storytellers: Bringing Muslims Home is packed with references from both the Bible and the Qur’an. It is an invaluable resource for Christians engaging with the followers of Islam, Muslims who are curious and wish to understand more about Christianity, and to anyone with an interest in Christian–Muslim dialogue.By Aline Havard. 2019
Excerpt: "To those who made friends with Lucy Gordon on Governor’s Island it will seem a great change to find…
her, in this second story, so far away from home. She is only one of thousands, though, to whom a few months of the great war brought more changes than they ever thought could be crowded into a lifetime. Lucy can look back over less than a year to her old life at the army post in New York Harbor before the Colonel was ordered overseas. To that brief summer time when the Gordon family was united during her brother Bob’s West Point graduation leave, and to the dark days of the winter of 1917 when Bob was in a German prison. Even then Lucy never lost hope, and her brave confidence was gloriously rewarded with Bob’s freedom. But in those dreadful weeks of waiting she outgrew her childhood, as though even in that pleasant home on Governor’s Island she knew that peace and content could never come back to her and to those she loved until America had fired her final shot at Germany’s crumbling lines. She could not guess what lay before her,—what old friends she was to meet again in strange new places. Yet she had resolved, even before she had any hope of crossing to the other side, that, come what might, she would serve in her own way as steadfastly as her father served, as valiantly as Bob."By Caroline Scott. 2020
**From the highly acclaimed author of The Photographer of the Lost, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick** &‘A superb…
and quietly devastating novel about grief, hope and the horrific aftershocks of war&’ The Times, Book of the MonthThey need him to remember. He wants to forget. 1918. In the last week of the First World War, a uniformed soldier is arrested in Durham Cathedral. When questioned, it becomes clear he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The soldier is given the name Adam and transferred to a rehabilitation home. His doctor James is determined to recover who this man once was. But Adam doesn&’t want to remember. Unwilling to relive the trauma of war, Adam has locked his memory away, seemingly for good. When a newspaper publishes a feature about Adam, three women come forward, each claiming that he is someone she lost in the war. But does he believe any of these women? Or is there another family out there waiting for him to come home?Based on true events, When I Come Home Again is a deeply moving and powerful story of a nation&’s outpouring of grief, and the search for hope in the aftermath of war. Praise for When I Come Home Again: &‘A heartbreaking read which reveals the far-reaching tragedies of war… I highly recommend it&’ Anita Frank &‘Caroline Scott&’s quietly devastating second novel insightfully explores the impact of the Great War on returning soldiers and their families' S Magazine &‘A powerful story that&’s achingly moving and most beautifully written. Readers of Maggie O&’Farrell and Helen Dunmore are likely to enjoy&’ Rachel Hore &‘Powerful… A carefully, nuanced, complex story&’ Woman & Home 'Page turning, mysterious, engrossing and compelling' Lorna Cook 'A compulsive, heart-wrenching read' Liz Trenow &‘Caroline Scott evokes the damage and desolation of the Great War with aching authenticity' Iona Grey 'This beautiful and moving book drew me in from the first line and held me enthralled until the very end' Fiona Falpy 'Wonderful and evocative' Suzanne Goldring &‘A beautifully written novel – immersive, poignant, intricately woven&’ Judith Kinghorn &‘Scott litters her tale with clues and red herrings in the best mystery-writer way so we are kept guessing as to where the truth really lies&’ The BookBagBy Max Brooks. 2014
From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment—the Harlem HellfightersIn 1919, the…
369th infantry regiment marched home triumphantly from World War I. They had spent more time in combat than any other American unit, never losing a foot of ground to the enemy, or a man to capture, and winning countless decorations. Though they returned as heroes, this African American unit faced tremendous discrimination, even from their own government. The Harlem Hellfighters, as the Germans called them, fought courageously on—and off—the battlefield to make Europe, and America, safe for democracy. In THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS, bestselling author Max Brooks and acclaimed illustrator Caanan White bring this history to life. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, they tell the heroic story of the 369th in an action-packed and powerful tale of honor and heart.By Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu. 2023
This first-ever English translation of Nur Baba – a classic of modern Turkish literature written by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu –…
offers a unique window into Sufi lodges, social dilemmas, and intellectual life in early twentieth-century Istanbul. Inspired by Karaosmanoğlu’s personal experiences with Islamic mystical orders, it is a story of illicit romance and spiritual inquiry, depicting a colourful lodge of Sufi dervishes led by a charismatic, yet morally suspect, spiritual master named Nur Baba. The plot follows his attempts to seduce an attractive married woman from an elite family and recounts her dramatic experiences in the life of a Sufi community. The setting shuttles between the grand mansions of Istanbul’s elite families and a Sufi lodge where rich and poor intermingle. Exploring questions of gender, morality, and religious bias throughout, it captures the zeitgeist of early twentieth-century modernist thinkers who criticised Sufism for impeding social progress and debated the public roles of women in a rapidly modernising society. Alongside the editor’s meticulous translation, the volume includes a scholarly introduction, maps, and images, as well as explanatory footnotes that will aid both students and scholars alike. The novel will be of particular interest to those studying world literature, Sufi studies, and Ottoman-Turkish history.By Jamila Ahmed. 2023
Before she was the legendary Persian queen who spun a thousand tales, Shaherazade was a girl who saw something she…
shouldn't have.She told the king.She thought she was doing what was right.She couldn't have imagined what was to come.The Seljuk Empire is on fire and the king is on a rampage after learning of his wife's infidelity. Unsated by her execution, he has gone on to wed and behead a new wife night after night. Fear spreads through the city and Shaherazade must do something, anything, to halt the horror she has set in motion. When the king starts searching for his next bride, Shaherazade steps forward.As the sun sets on her wedding night, she begins to weave a tale that will go down in history.'A sumptuous, moreish novel infused with the joys of storytelling' LEILA ABOULELA, author of Minaret'I was entranced by this marvel of a book, wound about by the weave of its tales, unable to put it down' CLAIRE GILBERT, author of I, JulianBy Jamila Ahmed. 2023
FOR A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS SHAHERAZADE TOLD STORIES. THIS IS HERS. A spellbinding reimagining of the Arabian Nights and…
the fearless woman at the heart of it all: Shaherazade.Before she was the legendary Persian queen who spun a thousand tales, Shaherazade was a girl who saw something she shouldn't have.She told the king.She thought she was doing what was right.She couldn't have imagined what was to come.The Seljuk Empire is on fire and the king is on a rampage after learning of his wife's infidelity. Unsated by her execution, he has gone on to wed and behead a new wife night after night. Fear spreads through the city and Shaherazade must do something, anything, to halt the horror she has set in motion. When the king starts searching for his next bride, Shaherazade steps forward.As the sun sets on her wedding night, she begins to weave a tale that will go down in history.If you had to tell one story to save your life, what would it be?(P) 2023 Macmillan AudioBy Ayad Akhtar. 2020
AN ECONOMIST, NEW YORK TIMES AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR'Outstanding... it is hard to convey the breadth and…
brilliance of this work' Observer'A beautiful novel about an American son and his immigrant father that has echoes of THE GREAT GATSBY' New York TimesA deeply personal novel of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, HOMELAND ELEGIES blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part satire, part picaresque, at its heart it is the story of a father and son, and the country they call home.Ranging from the heartland towns of America to palatial suites in Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, Akhtar forges a narrative voice that is original as it is exuberantly entertaining. This is a world in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear and the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc. HOMELAND ELEGIES is a novel written in love and anger, which spares no one, least of all the author himself.