Japs Eye Fontanelle, an 88-year-old overweight, retired Japanese kamikaze pilot, insists that he is the rightful king of the Holy Channel Island of Jersey. He also claims to be the Creator of the Universe. This is his autobiography, written while under armed guard inside the gold vault at Fort Knox. Fontanelle recounts his truly remarkable life: from his birth in the city of Kyoto and his involvement in World War II, to his study of the ancient science of astrology, the historic discovery of his own divinity, and the founding of the first Astrological Kingdom on Earth. Occasionally, when he isn't busy creating galaxies, he takes a break to watch "Star Trek".Structured in twelve meticulously-researched, hilariously funny zodiacal chapters-and padded with photo inserts revealing such delights as God returning from his ninth suicide mission, Shinto monks, and God's genitals- The Astrological Diary of God is a savage and irreverent take on modern belief.

    The sun rises, full and golden, upon a lush, centuries-old village tucked into the highlands where the blood-red poppies bloomed. Outside the village leader's home, the sound of voices carries past the grapevines to the lane where Anno, his youngest daughter, slips out unseen. She heads to a secret meeting place. She forgets that enemies surround her village. She forgets that her father meets each day with trepidation. She knows only the love she has for Daron, who waits for her as she hastens to him, once again breaking the ancient rules of courtship.Anno and Daron wish for nothing more than marriage and a better day alongside their neighbors, but neither is prepared for the dark, dangerous secret that Daron's father keeps or the upheaval that will soon envelop their village, their land, and their hearts.With a quiet, captivating passion, Maral Boyadjian paints a timeless love story against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic but long-forgotten tragedies of the early twentieth century. Unforgettably, touching, As the Poppies Bloomed reveals a beautiful and heart-wrenching tale of love, loss and hope - of two young Armenians who face seemingly insurmountable odds while the land of the sultans breaks apart and World War I rushes toward them along with the greatest massacre the world had ever known.

    It contains letters and a diary, written in Armenian. As she pieces together her family story, Katerina learns that Mariam's childhood was shattered by the Armenian tragedy of 1915.Mariam was exiled from her home in Turkey and separated from her beloved brother, Gabriel, her life marred by grief and the loss of her first love. Dissatisfied and restless, Katerina tries to find resolution in her own life as she completes Mariam's story – on a journey that takes her across Cyprus and then half a world away to New York.Miracles, it seems, can happen – for those trapped by the past, and for Katerina herself.

    At the center of these memories is his elusive love, Sarah, a fiercely intelligent French scholar caught in the intricate tension between Europe and the Middle East.With exhilarating prose and sweeping erudition, Mathias Énard pulls astonishing elements from disparate sources—nineteenth-century composers and esoteric orientalists, Balzac and Agatha Christie—and binds them together in a most magical way.

    He begins with a mystery: Why is the most important god in the Rg Veda, the oldest of India's sacred texts, known by a secret name--"Ka," or Who?What ensues is not an explanation, but an unveiling. Here are the stories of the creation of mind and matter; of the origin of Death, of the first sexual union and the first parricide. We learn why Siva must carry his father's skull, why snakes have forked tongues, and why, as part of a certain sacrifice, the king's wife must copulate with a dead horse. A tour de force of scholarship and seduction, Ka is irresistible.

    Readers the world over know his poignant tale of "The Little Mermaid," who sacrifices everything for love, and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," whose affection for a paper ballerina is symbolized by his transformation into a small tin heart. Several of Andersen's stories are so well known—among them "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling"—that their titles alone have become meaningful figures of speech. Hans Christian Andersen: Classic Fairy Tales collects 100 of Andersen's incomparable fairy tales and stories, among them "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," "The Princess and the Pea," "The Red Shoes," "The Wild Swans," and his fantasy masterpiece, "The Snow-Queen." The book is abundantly illustrated with more than 100 hundred drawings and color plates by Dugald Stewart Walker and Hans Tegner, two of Andersen's best-known illustrators.

    Mosheen's dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq's wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice.The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.

    Its teachers offer pupils lessons in violence, abuse and neglect. Lela is old enough to leave but has nowhere else to go. She stays and plans for the children's escape, for the future she hopes to give to Irakli, a young boy in the home. When an American couple visits, offering the prospect of a new life, Lela decides she must do everything she can to give Irakli this chance.

    In Michael Meyer's fluent, idiomatic translations, The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler stand as masterpieces of naturalist drama.

    A cold, snowy morning.Andrei Danilovich Komiaga is fast asleep. A scream, a moan, and a death rattle slowly pull him out of his drunken stupor—but wait, that’s just his ring tone. And so begins another day in the life of an oprichnik, one of the czar’s most trusted courtiers—and one of the country’s most feared men.Welcome to the new New Russia, where futuristic technology and the draconian codes of Ivan the Terrible are in perfect synergy. Corporal punishment is back, as is a divine monarch, but these days everyone gets information from high-tech news bubbles, and the elite get high on hallucinogenic, genetically modified fish.Over the course of one day, Andrei Komiaga will bear witness to—and participate in—brutal executions; extravagant parties; meetings with ballerinas, soothsayers, and even the czarina. He will rape and pillage, and he will be moved to tears by the sweetly sung songs of his homeland. He will consume an arsenal of drugs and denounce threats to his great nation’s morals. And he will fall in love—perhaps even with a number of his colleagues.Vladimir Sorokin, the man described by Keith Gessen (in The New York Review of Books) as “[the] only real prose writer, and resident genius” of late-Soviet fiction, has imagined a near future both too disturbing to contemplate and too realistic to dismiss. But like all of his best work, Sorokin’s new novel explodes with invention and dark humor. A startling, relentless portrait of a troubled and troubling empire, Day of the Oprichnik is at once a richly imagined vision of the future and a razor-sharp diagnosis of a country in crisis.

    But all fades away when he sees Yi Jin perform the delicate traditional Dance of the Spring Oriole. Though well aware that women of the court belong to the palace, the young diplomat confesses his love to the Emperor, and gains permission for Yi Jin to accompany him back to France.A world away in Belle Epoque Paris, Yi Jin lives a free, independent life, away from the gilded cage of the court, and begins translating and publishing Joseon literature into French with another Korean student. But even in this new world, great sorrow awaits her. Yi Jin’s grieving and suffering is only amplified by homesickness and a longing for her oldest friend. But her homecoming was not a happy one. Betrayal, jealousy, and intrigue abound, culminating with the tragic assassination of the last Joseon empress—and the poisoned pages of a book.Rich with historic detail and filled with luminous characters, Korea’s most beloved novelist brings a lost era to life in a story that will resonate long after the final page.

    Zhivago and Romeo and Juliet.  Its mysterious author was recently the subject of a feature article in the New Yorker, which has inspired a forthcoming biography. Out of print for nearly three decades until the hardcover re-release last year, Ali and Nino is Kurban Said's masterpiece. It is a captivating novel as evocative of the exotic desert landscape as it is of the passion between two people pulled apart by culture, religion, and war.It is the eve of World War I in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea, poised precariously between east and west.  Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim schoolboy from a proud, aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European sensibilities.   To be together they must overcome blood feud and scandal, attempt a daring horseback rescue, and travel from the bustling street of oil-boom Baku, through starkly beautiful deserts and remote mountain villages, to the opulent palace of Ali's uncle in neighboring Persia.  Ultimately the lovers are drawn back to Baku, but when war threatens their future, Ali is forced to choose between his loyalty to the beliefs of his Asian ancestors and his profound devotion to Nino.  Combining the exotic fascination of a tale told by Scheherazade with the range and magnificence of an epic, Ali and Nino is a timeless classic of love in the face of war.

    A sinister totalitarian ministry called the Palace of Dreams recruits Mark-Alem to sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of the people in the empire, seeking the master-dreams that give clues to the empire's destiny.

    The Travels recounts Polo's journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polo's contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1271, Polo's account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polo's return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polo's prose at once reveals the medieval imagination's limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.

    In a newly independent country, corrupt oligarchs have unprecedented power and considerable leeway to act above the law. When the ruthless Sergei Ayvazian approaches Lara’s father with an offer to manage her through a wonderful and successful modeling career, her father refuses and is subsequently murdered. A month later, Lara’s mother accepts the offer and Lara is whisked away to Sergei’s mansion, only to be violently raped and sent to Moscow. Forced into prostitution, Lara refuses to accept her fate and goes through the motions as she’s moved from Moscow to Dubai and eventually sold for one year to a local VIP. Facing the horrors of forced prostitution, Lara sets forth to escape while Swiss investigative reporter Edward Laurian works to help Lara and her family from back in Armenia. As plots begin to unfold and crumble all around her, Lara’s chances of escape begin to look increasingly slim, but with unlikely allies, the extraordinary courage and moral fiber of her family, and a spirit that never dies, Lara’s fate is far from sealed. A Place Far Away is a shocking mystery and suspense novel that explores much more than the world of human trafficking and prostitution. Using gripping fiction and suspense to shed light on hard-hitting issues, this groundbreaking and riveting new novel informs while keeping readers completely captivated from the very beginning. Set in a variety of locales like Armenia, Dubai, and Moscow, A Place Far Away by Vahan Zanoyan touches on a variety of social and cultural issues that are rarely seen in today’s literary and entertainment world.