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Come back to Afghanistan: a California teenager's story
By Said Hyder Akbar, Susan Burton, Said Akbar. 2005
Provides an insider's view of the post-Taliban Afghanistan government. The author describes his father's return to Afghanistan in December 2001,…
as President Hamid Karzai's spokesman and later governor of Kunar province, and his own experiences while spending summers there beginning in 2002. For senior high and older readers. 2005Ten kings: and the worlds they ruled
By Milton Meltzer, Bethanne Andersen. 2002
Biographical sketches of ten powerful monarchs who reigned in past centuries--beginning with Hammurabi of Mesopotamia, who was famous for his…
code of laws, and ending with Peter the Great of Russia who wanted to modernize his country. Discusses how they used and abused power. Companion to Ten Queens ... (DB 46941). For grades 6-9. 2002A group of one
By Rachna Gilmore. 2001
Fifteen-year-old Tara Mehta's life is turned upside down when her grandmother visits from India. Naniji disapproves of the family's Canadian…
lifestyle and feminist mother. But Tara also learns of her heritage and Naniji's involvement in Gandhi's peace movement. Some strong language. For junior and senior high readers. 2001Anna and the King of Siam: Commemorative Edition
By Margaret Landon. 1997
Anna Leonowens, a Welsh widow hired in 1862 to be governess to the children and concubines of the king of…
Siam, found the contrasts between the exotic Orient and Victorian Great Britain striking. Landon recounts Leonowen's five years of adventures and confrontations. This book inspired the Broadway musical The King and IGrace
By Robert Lacey. 1994
The author examines the image of a beautiful fairy-tale princess who did not live happily ever after. Lacey chronicles the…
story of Grace Kelly's abbreviated life through her American phase, depicting the actress with a cool, classy facade and a tawdry private life. When the Hollywood star married her European prince, the location of her fantasy life changed, but reality began to destroy the portrait. BestsellerYankees in the land of the gods: Commodore Perry and the opening of Japan
By Peter Booth Wiley. 1990
Before Perry's 1853 expedition, contact between the United States and Japan occurred mainly through shipwrecked sailors, including Americans who stranded…
themselves on Japan's shore to try to enter the self-isolated country. Using newly translated Japanese documents as well as reports from Perry and his crew, Wiley provides both countries' perspectives on the historic encounterOn our own: independent living for older persons (Golden Age Bks.)
By Ursula A Falk, Falk, Ursula A. Falk. 1989
Americans cherish their independence, and so it is difficult when age raises the spectre of dependence. Falk suggests ways in…
which older people can continue to live successfully on their own. She outlines meal programs, alternative living arrangements, family support systems, leisure activities, and employment opportunities. 1989Henry V: the scourge of God
By Desmond Seward. 1988
A study of the life of Henry V. The son of the usurper Henry IV tried to legitimize his family's…
claim to the throne by conquering lands England once held in FranceAs my parents age: reflections on life, love, and change
By Cynthia Ruchti. 2017
Talking to the enemy: stories
By Avner Mandelman. 2005
Nine stories about the Israeli experience. In "Terror" a father beats the son who fails to stand up for his…
five-year-old brother, thus instilling the precept that, right or wrong, family comes first, even before justice or fear. Strong language and some violence. Sophie Brody Medal. 2005The Gift
By Zoe Maeve. 2021
Production note: This title was created through eBOUND's Literary Image Description project. The author and illustrator wrote or consulted on…
the image descriptions, which are included in the body and narration of the text. The Shining meets Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette in this gripping debut from an award-winning talent.The Gift opens on the snow-blanketed grounds of the Alexander Palace in Western Russia where a moth has come to attend the birth of the fourth Romanov princess, Anastasia. She and her siblings grow up in a gilded world, isolated from the society beyond the palace walls despite their dominion over it. After mysteriously receiving a camera on her fifteenth birthday, she begins to document her world, but the gift carries with it a weight she can't yet see. A creature moves on the edge of her vision and stalks her dreams. As the revolution unfolds, the confines of Anastasia's world keep closing in. Something is following her, and it might not be human.Losing Kei
By Suzanne Kamata. 2007
A young mother fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child in this acutely insightful first novel about an…
intercultural marriage gone terribly wrong.Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she's settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill's duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider's knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice. Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.The April Fool
By Alice Schertle. 1981
Three Generations
By Yu Young-Nan, Yom Sang-Seop. 2005
Touted as one of Korea's most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun…
Ilbo) charts the tensions in the Jo family in 1930s Japanese occupied Seoul. Yom's keenly observant eye reveals family tensions withprofound insight. Delving deeply into each character's history and beliefs, he illuminates the diverse pressures and impulses driving each. This Korean classic, often compared to Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters, reveals the country's situation under Japanese rule, the traditional Korean familial structure, and the battle between the modern and the traditional. The long-awaited publication of this masterpiece is a vital addition to Korean literature in English.First Love Again
By Kristina Knight. 2015
Some loves deserve a second chance... Coming back to Gulliver Island after a ten-year absence to take care of his…
father should have been simple. Emmett Deal would fix and sell the family home, and return to Cincinnati with his ailing father in tow. Yet something compels him to stay a little longer. The beautiful, bright eyes of Jaime Brown. Ten years ago, traumatic events changed the course of Jaime's life forever, catching her in a small-town life she can't escape. Emmett's return stirs up the memories she wanted to ignore...and dreams she had forgotten. Now she finds herself with a rare opportunity-a second chance. Only this time, it's not just for love...The Penguin's Song
By Marilyn Booth, Hassan Daoud. 2014
"I loved this book when I read it in Arabic. The Penguin's Song is a classic novel of the Lebanese…
civil war."--Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman"In The Penguin's Song, a city falls, a father dies, two women walk the same road over and over, a boy with a broken body dreams of love. Like Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy, this spare yet lyrical parable tells us more about exile, loss and the wearing away of hope than most us want to know. I love this beautiful book."--Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances and The End of Youth"Daoud's novel is an elegiac account of loneliness and separation. . . . This is a haunting story inhabited by the ghosts of past lives and demolished buildings, where desires are left unfulfilled and loneliness sweeps through every soul."--Publishers Weekly"Daoud's claustrophobic novel hauntingly conveys one family's isolation after being relocated during the Lebanese civil war. . . . Daoud's evocation of history as it is experienced is excellent. His characters live through momentous events, but their struggles to survive land them in a kind of purgatory. A novel that defies expectations as it summons up the displacement and dehumanization that can come with war."--Kirkus Reviews" . . . deftly explores how people cope with the aftermath of war and the tremendous struggle of rebuilding not only with bricks and concrete but with heart, hopes, and dreams."--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH, and Library Journal"Nothing about reading Hassan Daoud's novels is easy, but the effort is always rewarded. The complex but mundane beauty of his prose is skillfully rendered in Marilyn Booth's translation, The Penguin's Song, a novel as much about the dreary loneliness of daily life as it is about the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. Slowly paced, heavy with the burden of waiting, Daoud's text unfolds painstakingly, page after page. The horror of war, the pain of isolation, the longing of unfulfilled desire, and the power of the printed word all shine through in this finely-crafted narrative."--Michelle Hartman, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill UniversityAs war wreaks havoc on the historic heart of Beirut, tenants of the old city are pushed to the margins and obliged to live on the surrounding hillsides, where it seems they will stay forever, waiting. The dream of return becomes a way of life in the unending time of war."The Penguin" is a physically deformed young man who lives with his aging mother and father in one of the "temporary" buildings. His father spends his days on the balcony of their apartment, looking at the far-off city and pining for his lost way of life. Mother and father both find their purpose each day in worrying about the future for their son, while he spends his time in an erotic fantasy world, centered on a young woman who lives in the apartment below. Poverty and family crisis go hand in hand as the young man struggles with his isolation and unfulfilled sexual longing.Voted "The Best Arabic Novel of the Year" when it was first published, The Penguin's Song is a finely wrought parable of how one can live out an entire life in the dream of returning to another.The Way of the Dog
By Sam Savage. 2013
"Sam Savage [creates] some of the most original, unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction. . . . Readers are left with…
a voice so strong that Savage is able to derive significance from these events by sheer literary force."--Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers"Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice."--Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times"[Savage] creates one of the most intriguing stories--and one of the most vivid characters--that this reader has encountered this year."--The WriterSam Savage's most intimate, tender novel yet follows Harold Nivenson, a decrepit, aging man who was once a painter and arts patron. The death of Peter Meinenger, his friend turned romantic and intellectual rival, prompts him to ruminate on his own career as a minor artist and collector and make sense of a lifetime of gnawing doubt.Over time, his bitterness toward his family, his gentrifying neighborhood, and the decline of intelligent artistic discourse gives way to a kind of peace within himself, as he emerges from the shadow of the past and finds a reason to live, every day, in "the now."Sam Savage is the best-selling author of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, The Cry of the Sloth, and Glass. A native of South Carolina, Savage holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale University. He resides in Madison, Wisconsin.Mulberry and Peach
By Sau-Ling Wong, Hualing Nieh. 1981
This extraordinary novel tells the story of two women-Mulberry and Peach-who are really one. Mulberry is a young Chinese-American woman…
who has fled the turmoil of postwar China to settle in the United States. Unable to forget the terrors she has witnessed or to resolve the conflicts between her new life and her old, she copes by developing a second personality: the fearless, tough-talking, sexually uninhibited Peach. While Mulberry clings to her cultural and ethical roots, Peach renounces her past to embrace the American way of life with a vengeance. These two women-both in flight-speak to their readers through an innovative narrative structure, combining journal entries, interior dialogue, letters, poetry, and myth. Mulberry's past-mainly her experiences during the Japanese occupation of China and the years of civil war between Communists and Nationalists-haunts the text. Separated from her family, she seeks refuge in the home of wealthy cousins, who try desperately to maintain their rigid traditions as warrign forces close in around Peking and the house is systematically looted. Mulberry escapes downriver in a boat carrying a strange assortiment of refugees. But her escape to Taiwan only brings new terrors: when her new husband is targeted by the police, Mulberry msut go into hiding with him in a tiny attic room. There her young daughterm who cannot remember life "outside", descends into a fantasy world of her own invention and unwittingly ensures her family's doom, Mulberry's journal entires alternate with a series of letters from Peach to "the man from the USA immigration service." Peach has embarked on a cross-country journey in flight from possible deportation. Pregnant and penniless, she lives by her wits while taunting her pursuers and ridiculing her alter ego Mulberry, whom she seeks, finally, to conquer. In Mulberry and Peach Hualing Nieh offers a rare perspective, through the eyes of a young refugee woman, of the upheavals of contemporary China (where the book was banned upon its first publication in 1976). Through her experimental, highly effective narrative, she also presents an unforgettable portrait of the pain of cultural dislocation and the anguish of psychological disintegration.Basti
By Intizar Husain, Asif Farrukhi, Frances W. Pritchett. 1979
An NYRB Classics OriginalBasti is a beautifully written reckoning with the tragic history of Pakistan. Basti means settlement, a common…
place, and Intizar Husain's extraordinary novel begins with a mythic, even mystic, vision of harmony between old and young, man and woman, Muslim and Hindu. Then Zakir, the hero, wakes to the modern world. Crowds gather. Slogans echo. Cities burn. Whether hunkered down with family or furtively meeting to exchange news with friends in cafés, Zakir is alone in a country lost to the politics of loneliness.history. The new country of Pakistan is born, separating him once and for all from the woman he loves, and in a jagged and jarring sequence of scenes we witness a nation and a psyche torn into existence only to be torn apart again and again by political, religious, economic, linguistic, personal, and sexual conflicts--in effect, a world of loneliness. Zakir, whose name means "remember," serves as the historian of this troubled place, while the ties he maintains across the years with old friends--friends who run into one another in cafés and on corners and the odd other places where history takes a time-out--suggest that the possibility of reconciliation is not simply a dream. The characters wait for a sign that minds and hearts may still meet. In the meantime, the dazzling artistry of Basti itself gives us reason to hope against hope.Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
By Karen Tei Yamashita. 1990
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is a burlesque of comic-strip adventures and apocalyptic portents that stretches familiar truths…
to their logical extreme in a future world that is just recognizable enough to be frightening. In the Author's Note," Karen Tei Yamashita writes that her book is like a Brazilian soap opera called a novela: "the novela's story is completely changeable according to the whims of the public psyche and approval, although most likely, the unhappy find happiness; the bad are punished; true love reigns; a popular actor is saved from death ... an idyll striking innocence, boundless nostalgia and terrible ruthlessness." The stage is a vast, mysterious field of impenetrable plastic in the Brazilian rain forest set against a backdrop of rampant environmental destruction, commercialization, poverty, and religious rapture. Through the Arc of the Rainforest is narrated by a small satellite hovering permanently around the head of an innocent character named Kazumasa. Through no fault of his own, Kazumasa seems to draw strange and significant people into his orbit and to find himself at the center of cataclysmic events that involve carrier pigeons, religious pilgrims, industrial espionage, magic feathers, big money, miracles, epidemics, true love, and the virtual end of the world. This book is simultaneously entertaining and depressing, with all the rollicking pessimism you'd expect of a good soap opera or a good political satire."- Kirsten Backstrom, 500 Great Books by Women