Book picks similar to
A Red Cherry on a White-tiled Floor: Selected Poems by Maram Al-Massri
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Slave to the Dream: Everyone’s Dream
Gaylan D. Wright - 2020
Wright. Sometimes focusing on some tragic and/or surprising events that more sensitive readers may not wish to experience, this candid and honest account details the history of the author’s eighteen-year career with the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Discussing themes of the American Dream and the true measure of success in life, Wright takes us through the life of a trooper from training to tragedy and back again, with the idea that dreams are not always what they seem, for worse and for better.
The Queue
Basma Abdel Aziz - 2012
Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer. Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the brother of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet. Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehia’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehia and save his life. Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Nothing to Lose But Your Life: An 18-Hour Journey With Murad
Suad Amiry - 2010
The story of a Palestinian woman's harrowing trek as she shadows illegal workers crossing into the town of Petah Tikva in Israel, this book encapsulates eighteen hours that contain countless moments of mortal danger.
Men Around The Messenger: The Companions Of The Prophet
Khalid Muhammad Khalid
The sixty-four Companions presented here are representative of that unique generation, a generation without any parallel in history. They come from all walks of life and character. These are stories of real people which can be historically verified. These stories will touch the souls of believers, for they will find in them yet another proof of that conviction that fills their hearts, though it may be denied and its signs effaced by wielders of power in the Muslim lands through treachery and cowardice.
Poems of Arab Andalusia
Cola Franzen - 1990
This poetry of Arab Andalusia made a profound impact on Spain's Generation of ‘27. Rafael Alberti says that it "was a revelation for me and had a great influence on my work, but above all influenced the work of Federico García Lorca."Cola Franzen's vibrant, delicious and faithful renderings of this poetic motherlode are, to quote from a poet in her marvelous compilation, 'shooting stars that leap agile as acrobats.'" —Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, author of An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles"Of those things which delight the senses (according to a Tradition of the Prophet) the chiefest are 'water, green things & a beautiful face'; therefore a poetry of noble exquisiteness limits itself to certain tropes, in which the wisdom of sensuality is endlessly rediscovered. Blow dust from the folios of the vanished Moors & be stabbed by the URGENT NECESSITY of light-dappled fountains, the fractals of the garden, the transmutations of desire." —Peter Lamborn Wilson, author of Ploughing the CloudsCola Franzen has translated from Spanish some twenty volumes of prose and poetry, including Claudia Guillén's The Challenge of Comparative Literature, and Dreams of the Abandoned Seducer by Alicia Borinsky.
The Living Fire
Edward Hirsch - 2010
Repeatedly confronting the darkness, his own sense of godlessness (“Forgive me, faith, for never having any”), he also struggles with the unlikely presence of the divine, the power of art to redeem human transience, and the complexity of relationships. Throughout the collection, his own life trajectory enriches the poems; he is the “skinny, long-beaked boy / who perched in the branches of the old branch library,” as well as the passionate middle-aged man who tells his lover, “I wish I could paint you— / . . . / I need a brush for your hard angles / and ferocious blues and reds. / . . . / I wish I could paint you / from the waist down.”Grieving for the losses occasioned by our mortality, Hirsch’s ultimate impulse as a poet is to praise—to wreathe himself, as he writes, in “the living fire” that burns with a ferocious intensity.
The Yacoubian Building
Alaa Al Aswany - 2002
Teeming with frank sexuality and heartfelt compassion, this book is an important window on to the experience of loss and love in the Arab world.
Second Person Singular
Sayed Kashua - 2010
His new novel is considered internationally to be his most accomplished and entertaining work yet.Winner of the prestigious Bernstein Award, Second Person Singular centers on an ambitious lawyer who is considered one of the best Arab criminal attorneys in Jerusalem. He has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of town, a large house, speaks perfect Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. One day at a used bookstore, he picks up a copy of Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, and inside finds a love letter, in Arabic, in his wife’s handwriting. Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer hunts for the book’s previous owner—a man named Yonatan—pulling at the strings that hold all their lives together.With enormous emotional power, and a keen sense of the absurd, Kashua spins a tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, and questions whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves. Second Person Singular is a deliciously complex psychological mystery and a searing dissection of the individuals that comprise a divided society.
All Summer Long
Bob Greene - 1993
And so Ben, a divorced TV journalist, Ronnie, a high-powered CEO, and Michael, a high school English teacher, take leave of their families and jobs for a cross-country road trip to remember. Along the way, they see baseball games, state fairs, Elvis's Las Vegas hotel suite, and a convention of dental hygienists, and not only experience all of America in full bloom, but discover new truths about themselves. All Summer Long is a wise, funny, touching story you'll slurp down like a cold milkshake from the drive-in.
Children of the New World
Assia Djebar - 1962
Like the classic film The Battle of Algiers—enjoying renewed interest in the face of world events—Djebar’s novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out.However, Djebar focuses on the experiences of women drawn into the politics of resistance. Her novel recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectives—from those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organizers—Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and at the same time movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.
I am a Chechen!
German Sadulaev - 2010
He brings to life his friends - now reduced to pieces of flesh - revisiting their first loves, their passion for rock music, their quests for martyrdom. And he immerses us in the intoxicating beauty of his homeland's mountains, blossoms and the flocks of migratory swallows that fill its skies.I Am a Chechen! is an intensely personal journey through the carnage of the war, exploring the pain, the challenge, and above all the meaning of being a Chechen.
Lightduress
Paul Celan - 1970
Once again this bilingual volume, translated in this edition for the first time in English, reveals the importance of the great Romanian-German poet, who lived for most of his life in France. Translator Pierre Joris has achieved a great feat in bringing these three volumes into the English language.
The Bad Wife Handbook
Rachel Zucker - 2007
Formally innovative and blazingly direct, The Bad Wife Handbook cross-examines marriage, motherhood, monogamy, and writing itself. Rachel Zucker's upending of grammatical and syntactic expectations lends these poems an urgent richness and aesthetic complexity that mirrors the puzzles of real life. Candid, subversive, and genuinely moving, The Bad Wife Handbook is an important portrait of contemporary marriage and the writing life, of emotional connection and disconnection, of togetherness and aloneness.
The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology
Nathalie Handal - 2000
Uniting Arab women poets from the all over the Arab World anti abroad, Nathalie Handal has put together an outstanding collection that introduces poets who write in Arabic, French, English, and Swedish, among them some of the twentieth century's most accomplished poets and today's most exciting new voices.Translated by distinguished translators and poets from around the world, The Poetry of Arab Women showcases the work of 82 poets, among them: Etel Adnan, Andre Chedid, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Fadwa Tuqan.