Mingling memoir, history, politics, and mythology, the doctor who could not save Neda Agha-Soltan tries to understand how the Iranian revolution that brought down the Shah's peacock throne evolved into an equally repressive regime--and how his generation can reclaim their country.
As mesmerizing as a tale from the lips of Sheherazade, Gazelle traces the story of Elizabeth, a thirteen-year-old American girl whose adolescent passion is awakened in the exotic climate of 1950s Cairo. While her mother–whose beauty and sexual prowess both frighten and fascinate Elizabeth–moves into a hotel to pursue a string of lovers, her father, a historian, loses himself in a world of chess and toy soldiers. Elizabeth’s imagination, primed by an explicit edition of The Arabian Nights, leads her to fantasies about her father’s friend, a gentle, older man named Ramses Ragab, a perfume maker who visits their house regularly to play games of war and who opens her up to the mystery of hieroglyphics and the art of exotic scents.
While helping raise money for a Brooklyn park, Nancy must track down the kidnapper who has abducted a performing band’s lead singer—and discovers a hidden motive buried deep in the city’s past.
"Sister to seven brothers, Annabelle should be used to men, but her trust was shattered the night her father almost killed her. Now Annabelle is a poised, polished ice queen, whom no man has ever touched ... . Stefano Cortez can tame a wild horse quicker than any man alive, and passion heats the blood in his veins. Annabelle might appear untouchable, but Stefano sees beneath the frost, sees the real her--a woman desperate to be brought to life again"--Publisher.
Young, arrogant tycoon Earl Grey seduces the naïve coed Anna Steal with his overpowering good looks and staggering amounts of money, but will she be able to get past his fifty shames, including shopping at Walmart on Saturdays, bondage with handcuffs, and his love of BDSM (Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick)? Or will his dark secrets and constant smirking drive her over the edge?
As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.
In 1244, the Sufi poet, Jallaludin Rumi, met a wandering seeker named Shams-i-Tabriz. Upon meeting, the two men immediately went into private retreat together and emerged 90 days later in a transformed condition. Rumi: Gazing at the Beloved reveals the esoteric practice that Rumi and Shams were engaged in.
Under the Gaze of Angels offers treasured views of family and neighborhood life, native to the Galilee, in the years leading up to and following the upheavals of 1948. A collection of four stories, told with simplicity and warmth, they include three set during the time of British mandate rule: “Zuha and the Book Vendor,” “The English Gramophone,” and “Yildiz the Turkish Woman.” These are followed by the book’s title work, a remembrance that travels from childhood to elder years, pursued by loss. Imagined or recalled in exile, these vivid, evocative mementos quietly disarm the violence that surrounds them, restoring a stolen past to memory under the gaze of angels.
A masterpiece of Arabic love poetry in a new and complete English translation The Translator of Desires, a collection of sixty-one love poems, is the lyric masterwork of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240 CE), one of the most influential writers of classical Arabic and Islamic civilization. In this authoritative volume, Michael Sells presents the first complete English translation of this work in more than a century, complete with an introduction, commentary, and a new facing-page critical text of the original Arabic. While grounded in an expert command of the Arabic, this verse translation renders the poems into a natural, contemporary English that captures the stunning beauty and power of Ibn ‘Arabi’s poems in such lines as “A veiled gazelle’s / an amazing sight, / her henna hinting, / eyelids signalling // A pasture between / breastbone and spine / Marvel, a garden / among the flames!” The introduction puts the poems in the context of the Arabic love poetry tradition, Ibn ‘Arabi’s life and times, his mystical thought, and his “romance” with Niẓām, the young woman whom he presents as the inspiration for the volume—a relationship that has long fascinated readers. Other features, following the main text, include detailed notes and commentaries on each poem, translations of Ibn ‘Arabi’s important prefaces to the poems, a discussion of the sources used for the Arabic text, and a glossary. Bringing The Translator of Desires to life for contemporary English readers as never before, this promises to be the definitive volume of these fascinating and compelling poems for years to come.
Set in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra's Paradise is the fictional graphic novel of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has vanished into an extrajudicial twilight zone.