Set in Cairo around the end of World War I, as Egypt, a Britishprotectorate, clamors for independence, 1988 Nobel Prize-winnerMahfouz's epic family drama explores deep fissures in thepatriarchal structure of one household. Prosperous merchant AhmadAbd al-Jawad, a tyrant at home, roams Cairo's tawdry entertainmentdistrict by night seeking illicit pleasures. His submissive wifeAmina is chained to the house; he throws her out on the streetafter she commits the sin of going outdoors for a walk. His twodaughters constantly bicker, and his three sons are beyond hiscontrol: Yasin commits sexual assaults on servants; Fahmy becomesan activist in the nationalist movement, while Kamal befriendsBritish soldiers. The first volume in Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy(1956-57), this dense novel charts an Egypt lurching into themodern age. Mahfouz is a master at building up dramatic scenes andat portraying complex characters in depth. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This textrefers to an out of print or unavailable
In his debut novel， The Kite Runner， Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do。 He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country’s political turmoil--in this case， Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over。 And he does this on his first try。 The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir， the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul， and Hassan， the son of Amir’s father’s servant。 As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s， the boys are inseparable。 They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever， and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted。 Even after Amir and his father flee to America， Amir r
WThen an infected bolt of cloth carries plagae from London toan isolated mountain viilage, a housemaid named Anna' Frith emergesas an unlikely heroine and healer. ThroUgh Anna s eyes we followthe story" of the plague vear, I666, as her fellow viliagers makean extraordinan choice: convinced by a visionary young, ministerthey elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundariesto arrest the spread of the disease. But as death reaches intoevery household.faith flays. When villagers turn from prayers tomurderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family,,the disintegration of her community, and the lure of illicit love.As she struggles to survive, a year of plague becomes instead arumsmirabilis, a year of wonders."
Here is the beloved, high-adventure story of David Balfour,whose uncle cheats him out of his inheritance and has him kidnappedand sold into slavery. An odyssey ensues, including a shipwreck,narrow escapes, and desperate fighting.
It begins in Geneva. There American lawyer Joel Converse meets aman he hasn't seen in twenty years, a covert operative who diesviolently at his feet, whispering words that hand Converse astaggering legacy of death: " THE GENERALS...THEY'REBACK...AQUITAINE " Suddenly Converse is running for his life, alonewith the world's most shattering secret. Pursued by anonymousexecutioners to the dark corners of Europe, he is forced to play agame of survival by blood rules he thought he'd long left behind.One by one, he traces each thread of a deadly progression to thehear of every major government-- a network of coordinated globalviolence that no one believes possible. No one but Converse and thewoman he once loved and lost. The only two people on earth who canwrest the world from the iron grasp of Aquitaine.
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about herlife in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was onlythree when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldierand went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence ofthe past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna,Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor ofGerman history, begins investigating the past and finally unearthsthe dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation oflife during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, ThoseWho Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure tosurvive and the legacy of shame.
You'll lose a lot of sleep ...Ralph does. At first he starts waking up earlier. And earlier. Then the hallucinations start - the colours, shapes and strange auras. Not to mention the bald doctors who always turn up at the scene of a death. That's when Ralph begins to lose a lot more than sleep. When he begins to understand why his hitherto mild-mannered friend, Ed, is getting out of control - dangerously so. And why his home town is about to become the new Armageddon ...
Following the best-selling triumph of Kafka on theShore—“daringly original,” wrote Steven Moore in The WashingtonPost Book World, “and compulsively readable”—comes a collectionthat generously expresses Murakami’s mastery. From the surreal tothe mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform thefull range of human experience in ways that are instructive,surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. As Richard Eder haswritten in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, “He addresses thefantastic and the natural, each with the same mix of gravity andlightness.” Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, aswell as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for.Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile inGreece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life,Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or theglow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those whoought to be the closest of all. “While
But now he is marked for death, caught in a maddening puzzle,racing for survival through the deep layers of his buried past intoa bizarre world of murderous conspirators -- led by Carlos, theworld's most dangerous assassin. And no one can help Jason Bournebut the woman who once wanted to escape him.
A nineteenth-century American travels back in time to sixth-century England in this darkly comic social satire. THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information A chronology of the author's life and work A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context An outline of key themes and plot points to guide the reader's own interpretations Detailed explanatory notes Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to the
The author of such classics as Tell Me Your Dreams and The Other Side of Midnight, Sidney Sheldon has sold more than 300 million copies of his books in 51 languages. The only writher to have won an Oscar, a Tony, and an Edgar award, he is—according to the Guinness Book of World Records—the most translated author in the world. Now this incomparable storyteller is back with another dazzling blockbuster guaranteed to enthrall fans everywhere. When five members of America's most illustrious family are all killed in separate accidents in less than a year, Dana Evans, a beautiful young anchorwoman for a Washington, D.C., television network, becomes suspicious. Investigating the deaths, the determined journalist uncovers a trail of blood that takes her to half a dozen countries around the world in search of a killer. In a startling turn of events, Dana becomes the hunted, and the terrible secret she's learned puts her and her young son into dire jeopardy from which they may not be able to escape
Only two rival spies—and one mysterious woman—can stop them:Scofield, CIA, and Talaniekov, KGB. They share a genius forespionage—and a life of terror and explosive violence. Swornenemies, they have vowed to terminate each other—yet now they mustbecome allies. Because only they possess the brutal skills andice-cold nerves vital to destroy an international circle ofkillers, the Matarese.
You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he lovesyou ...'. Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for heruntil she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, andfinds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes areopened by the unconventional characters she meets at the PensionBertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the CockneySignora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate sonGeorge. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life inItaly and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified inher terminally dull fiance Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn tofollow her own heart? "A Room with a View" is a sunny, brilliantlywitty comedy of manners.
The Time Machine (1895) and The Invisible Man (1897) are now more than a century old. Yet they endure as literarytexts, radio plays, and movies, because they appeal directly to twoof our deepest desires: immortality and omnipotence. The timemachine would allow us to escape death and gain knowledge of thefate of the earth, while invisibility would enable us to go andcome as we please, under the noses of friends and enemies. At thesame time, both fictions show us the dangers of fulfilled wishes:The Time Traveller discovers the future of humanity is not brightbut hideously dark, while the Invisible Man drowns in the madnessbrought about by his own experimentation. Of course, what Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) wanted to expressin these fantasies and what generations of readers have made ofthem are two radically different things. Erroneously labeled“science fiction,” and tricked out in their film versions with allkinds of fanciful devices with flashing lights and ominous buzzersWells never mentions
The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–hasbeen one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. The Translator is asuspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one personhas made a difference in the world, an on-the-ground account of oneof the biggest stories of our time: the brutal genocide under wayin Darfur. In 2003, Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, was among the hundredsof thousands of villagers attacked and driven from their homes bySudanese-government-backed militia groups. Though Hari’s villagewas burned to the ground, his family decimated and dispersed, hehimself escaped, eventually finding safety across the border. Withhis high school knowledge of languages, Hari offered his servicesas a translator and guide. In doing so, however, he had to returnto the heart of darkness–and he has risked his life again and againto help ensure that the story of his people is told while there isstill time to save them.
In his introduction to the The BestAmerican Noir of the Century , James Ellroywrites, “noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of thehard-boiled school of fiction. It’s the long drop off theshort pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfectmisalliance. It’s the nightmare of flawed souls with bigdreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing thatgoes bad.” Offering the best examples of literary surethings gone bad, this collection ensuresthat nowhere else can readers find a darker, morethorough distillation of American noir fiction.
