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“A story of slowly-building self-liberation and resilience. . . . Our conversations around this book are going to be meaningful, engaging and urgently necessary.” —Roxane Gay The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer Set primarily in Iran, this extraordinary debut novel weaves 50 years of modern Kurdish history through a story of a family facing oppression and injustices all too familiar to the Kurds. Leila dreams of making films to bring the suppressed stories of her people onto the global stage, but obstacles keep piling up. Her younger brother, Chia, i...
These haunting stories beautifully evoke the oppressive lives of modern women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Anis, a computer programmer, is at the end of her rope, putting up with the bullying criticism of a no-good, unemployed lout of a husband; Azar is a young divorcee, and the only person she can talk to is Reza; but she can see him only late at night when "they" are not around; Sharmin has Down's syndrome and hopelessly loves Azad; he loves Kazhal, beautiful and blessed; but Kazhal is married off and is divorced at twenty and now awaits a hopeless future . . . For these and other characters the weight of traditional attitudes, the harrassment of the religious establishment, and the attitudes of men make for a frustrating, confining, and sometimes unlivable existence.
From all four parts of Kurdistan and across the diaspora, Kurdish women from different geographical, political, and educational backgrounds pick up a pen, reflect, and remember. Going beyond exoticising stereotypes and patriarchal representations, Kurdish Women's Stories gives 25 women authorial freedom to write about their own lived experiences. With contributors ranging from 20 to 70 years of age, we hear stories of imprisonment, exile, disappearances of loved ones, gender-based violence, uprisings, feminist activism, and armed resistance, including first-hand accounts of political moments from the 1960s to today. Conceived as part of Culture Project's self-writing program, this book is es...
'Courageous teachers wanted to rebuilt war-torn nation.'With her marriage over and life gone flat, Theresa Turner responds to an online ad, and lands at a school in Kurdish Iraq. Befriended by a widow in a nearby village, Theresa is embroiled in the joys and agonies of traditional Kurds, especially the women who survived Saddam's genocide only to be crippled by age-old restrictions, brutality and honor killings. Theresa's greatest challenge will be balancing respect for cultural values while trying to introduce more enlightened attitudes toward women ? at the same time seeking new spiritual dimensions within herself.'The Kurdish Bike is gripping, tender, wry and compassionate ? an eye-opener into little-known customs in one of the world's most explosive regions ? a novel of love, betrayal and redemption.
The stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood are remarkably simple – a family is drawn together by shared and separate losses, a child’s reality conflicts with his parents’ memories, a young man struggles to come to terms with the loss of his father. Yet each piece of writing in this critically acclaimed collection is infused with a powerful life of its own, a precision of language and a scrupulous fidelity to the reality of time and place, of sea and Maritime farm. Focusing on the complexities and abiding mysteries at the heart of human relationships, the seven stories of The Lost Salt Gift of Blood map the close bonds and impassable chasms that lie between man and woman, parent and child.
Spring, 1971, East Pakistan. Rehana Haque is throwing a party for her beloved children, Sohail and Maya. Her young family is growing up fast, and Rehana wants to remember this day forever. But out on the hot city streets, something violent is brewing. As the civil war develops, a war which will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh, Rehana struggles to keep her children safe and finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma.
Firmly rooted in historical events, Atacama tells the story of Manuel Garay, the son of a communist miner/union leader and an anarchist organizer of working-class women, and Lucía Céspedes, the daughter of a fascist army officer and a socialite. A fateful turn of events leads to twelve-year-old Lucía befriending twelve-year-old Manuel, inextricably connecting them to a common denominator: Lucía’s adoring father and the perpetrator of the heinous crimes that have caused both children immeasurable suffering. Manuel and Lucía forge a friendship that grows as they come of age and realize that their lives are not only linked by Ernesto Céspedes’ actions, but also by a deep understanding of the other’s emotional predicaments, their commitment to social justice and their belief in the power of writing and art. Set in the first half of the twentieth century, but resonating loudly with today’s changing times, beautifully crafted Atacama covers themes related to class, gender, trauma, survival and the role of art in society.
Shortlisted: 2016 ReLit Awards, Novel Twenty years after a horrific captivity, Magda's perfect life begins to crumble. Helpless to the resurgence of memory, she collapses inward. Through a haze of desire frighteningly evocative of the attack, she desperately attempts to fit together the bits and pieces of self, which existed before and after. The Theory of Light at Midnight is the story of the disintegration of personality, and one woman's attempt to reconstruct integrity with the truth of brutality intact.
When Orhan’s brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal is found dead, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away. Intent on righting this wrong, Orhan unearths a story of the Armenian Genocide that, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which Orhan’s family is built.
New York Times bestselling author Khaled Hosseini says, “Set in post-revolutionary Iran, Sahar Delijani’s gripping novel is a blistering indictment of tyranny, a poignant tribute to those who bear the scars of it, and a celebration of the human heart’s eternal yearning for freedom.” Neda is born in Iran’s Evin Prison, where her mother is allowed to nurse her for a few months before an anonymous guard appears at the cell door one day and simply takes her away. In another part of the city, three-year-old Omid witnesses the arrests of his political activist parents from his perch at their kitchen table, yogurt dripping from his fingertips. More than twenty years after the violent, blo...