What happens when an old man wakes up one morning and finds that everything around him now fills with revulsion? What happens when Faleasa Osovae, the highest ranking alii in the village of Maalaelua, feigns madness and throws away his responsibilities as a chief?Albert Wendt is a Samoan, this novel plays in Samoa and gives a good feel for the Samoan way of life and gives also an idea how New Zealand affected it.

    in the Pacific. In this highly original work of history and adventure, novelist Robert Barclay weaves together characters and stories from mythological times with those of the present-day to give readers a rare and unsparing look at life in the contemporary Pacific.

    When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Raw and unforgettable, despairing yet filled with laughter, Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.

    Her children are almost grown, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air. But no one can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow. For this is East Pakistan in 1971, a country on the brink of war. And this family's life is about to change forever. Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, 'A Golden Age' is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith, and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.

    But he's focused on his duties as chief of the Maori in Whangara, New Zealand—a tribe that claims descent from the legendary "whale rider." In every generation since the whale rider, a male has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir—there's only Kahu. She should be next in line for the title, but her great-grandfather is blinded by tradition and sees no use for a girl. Kahu will not be ignored. And in her struggle she has a unique ally: the whale rider himself, from whom she has inherited the ability to communicate with whales. Once that sacred gift is revealed, Kahu may be able to reestablish her people's ancestral connections, earn her great-grandfather's attention—and lead her tribe to a bold new future.

    This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother’s prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu’s youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement—a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia. Beneath the Lion’s Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and indelibly tragic, Beneath The Lion’s Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut. .

    Following through on his promise at the conclusion of his famed work, Helping Verbs of the Heart, Esterhazy touches on all aspects of life and philosophy relevant to readers today, in an extraordinary novel that centers on a mother’s relationship to her son and the game of football. Powerful and original, Not Art is a major contribution from one of Europe’s most significant writers and perennial contender for the Nobel Prize.

    Her best friend Iraia wants the same, but as the descendent of a slave, such things are barely conceivable to him. One summer as they approach adulthood, they notice that their friendship has changed, and that, if they are ever to experience freedom, they will need to travel beyond the isolation and safety of their Queen Charlotte Sound home.One hundred years later, twins Lula and Bigsy's birth is literally one in a million, as their mother Tui likes to tell people. But when Tui dies they learn there is much she kept secret, especially about their heritage. They too will need to travel beyond the world they have known, to an island they barely knew existed, at the eastern edge of New Zealand's Pacific realm.Neither Mere and Iraia, nor Lula and Bigsy are aware that someone else is part of their journeys. He does not watch over them so much as watch through them, feeling their loss and confusion as if it were his own.

    Friendless and fatherless, sixteen-year-old Szu lives in the shadow of her mother Amisa, once a beautiful actress and now a hack medium performing séances with her sister in a rusty house. When Szu meets the privileged, acid-tongued Circe, an unlikely encounter develops into an intense friendship and offers Szu a means of escape from her mother's alarming solitariness.Seventeen years later, Circe is struggling through a divorce in fraught and ever-changing Singapore when a project comes up at work: a remake of the cult seventies horror film series 'Ponti', the very project that defined Amisa's short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a past that threatens her conscience.Told from the perspectives of all three women, Ponti is about friendship and memory, about the things we do when we're on the cusp of adulthood that haunt us years later. Beautifully written by debut author Sharlene Teo, and enormously atmospheric, Ponti marks the launch of an exciting new literary voice in the vein of Zadie Smith.

    For the young shepherd boy Dshurukuwaa, the confrontation comes in stages. First his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school, followed by the death of his beloved grandmother and with it, the connection to the tribe’s traditions and deep relationship to the land. But the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog — “all that was left to me” — dies after ingesting poison set out by the boy’s father to protect the herd from wolves. His despairing questions to the Heavenly Blue Sky are answered only by the silence of the wind.The first and only member of the Tuvans to use written language to tell stories, Galsan Tschinag chronicles their traditions in this fascinating, bittersweet novel.

    But for some, there's a lot more at stake than a Hermes Birkin. Leila has been in search of a wealthy husband for over a decade. Nadia moves to Dubai to support her husband s career, only to have her sacrifices thrown in her face. Sugar escapes the UK in an attempt to escape her past. Lady Luxe, the rebellious Emirati heiress, scoffs at everything her culture holds sacred. Until the day her double life starts unravelling at the seams. Set against a backdrop of luxury hotels and manmade islands, Desperate in Dubai tells the tale of four desperate women as they struggle to find truth, love, and themselves.

    In an old ruined city, emptied of most of its inhabitants, Ustad Ramzi, a famous wrestler past his prime, and Gohar Jan, a well-known courtesan whose kotha once attracted the wealthy and the eminent, contemplate the former splendour of their lives and the ruthless currents of time and history that have swept them into oblivion.

    Mugezi's hard-won observations form a cri de coeur for a people shaped by untold losses.

    A collection of twenty-four short stories from "A Real Samoan Woman." Sometimes funny, often poignant and always honest - this collection of award-winning short fiction is one woman's insight into life as a contemporary Pacific woman who is 'too brown to be white and too white to be brown.'

    But in a moment of vulnerability he makes a mistake: volunteering his unhinged Arabic-speaking cousin Boris to report on the Iraq War. Boris begins filing Gonzo missives from the conflict zone and Toni decides it is better to secretly rewrite his cousin’s increasingly incoherent ramblings than face up to the truth. But when Boris goes missing, Toni’s own sense of reality—and reliability—begins to unravel.Our Man In Iraq, the first of Robert Perisic’s novels to be translated into English, serves as an unforgettable introduction to a vibrant voice from Croatia. With his characteristic humor and insight, Perisic gets to the heart of life made and remade by war."Robert Perisic depicts, with acerbic wit, a class of urban elites who are trying to reconcile their nineties rebellion with the reality of present-day Croatia. . . . The characters' snide remarks could easily sound cynical but the novel has a levity informed by the sense of social fluidity that comes with democracy." —The New Yorker"Robert Perisic is a light bright with intelligence and twinkling with irony, flashing us the news that postwar Croatia not only endures but matters."—Jonathan Franzen" . . . terrifically witty and original. . . in addition to being a delightfully acerbic primer on a literarily underrepresented part of Europe, Our Man in Iraq may well prove to be one of those rare cases where something is actually gained in translation."— The Toronto Star