The New York Times bestselling "epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones" (Bustle). NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: AMAZON (Top 100 Editors Picks and Science Fiction and Fantasy) * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY * BOOKPAGE * AUTOSTRADDLE A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
It's 1699, and the salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle for equality, Baroness Marie Catherine D'Aulnoy invents a powerful weapon: 'fairy tales'. When Marie Catherine's daughter, Angelina, arrives in Paris for the first time, she is swept up in the glamour and sensuality of the city, where a woman may live outside the confines of the church or marriage. But this is a fragile freedom, as she discovers when Marie Catherine's close friend Nicola Tiquet is arrested, accused of conspiring to murder her abusive husband. In the race to rescue Nicola, illusions will be shattered and dark secrets revealed as all three women learn how far they will go to preserve their liberty in a society determined to control them. This keenly-awaited second book from Melissa Ashley, author of The Birdman's Wife, restores another remarkable, little-known woman to her rightful place in history, revealing the dissent hidden beneath the whimsical surfaces of Marie Catherine's fairy tales. The Bee and the Orange Tree is a beautifully lyrical and deeply absorbing portrait of a time, a place, and the subversive power of the imagination.
"As much a book of poetry as a novel, as much a symphony as a memoir, this is an extraordinary book from a writer at the top of his powers. Reminiscent of Berger and Calvino, Jeff Talarigo manages to capture the breadth and circumference of story-telling, while also giving us a privileged insight into the daily life and dreams of Gaza." —Colum McCann, Thirteen Ways of Looking In the mode of J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees engages poetic language, mythic themes, and childlike perspectives to offer an original approach to a conflict that has become hardened and polarized. These linked stories of an American’s experience in Gaza expose the seven-decade long Palestinian diaspora in a disquieting allegory of the clash between the occupied and the occupier. In a place where political posturing, bloody war, journalistic witness, and even patient negotiation have yielded so little understanding, we enter the cemetery of the orange trees, where urchins kite dead birds, goats utter wisdom, camels and donkeys huddle together, and merchandise magically passes underground through the tunnels of Gaza. But this is no fairy tale or bestiary. In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees is a waking, attentive dream-journal, leading us back to a place where hatred, strife, and even human language itself might sing. Jeff Talarigo is the author of two novels: The Pearl Diver and The Ginseng Hunter. He has lived in Gaza and Japan, and currently resides in Oakland, California.
Five novellas on the Spanish conquest of the New World which mix drama, philosophy and satire. In "The Two Americas" instead of discovering America, Columbus discovers paradise and decides to stay.
The Osage Orange Tree, a never-before-published story by beloved poet William Stafford, is about young love complicated by misunderstanding and the insecurity of adolescence, set against the backdrop of poverty brought on by the Great Depression. The narrator recalls a girl he once knew. He and Evangeline, both shy, never find the courage to speak to each other in high school. Every evening, however, Evangeline meets him at the Osage orange tree on the edge of her property. He delivers a newspaper to her, and they talk—and as the year progresses a secret friendship blossoms. This magical coming-of-age tale is brought to life through linocut illustrations by Oregon artist Dennis Cunningham, with an afterword by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a personal friend of Stafford’s. In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O’Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.
Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award A TIME Best Book of the Year A New Yorker Best Book of the Year An extraordinary novel from a Man Booker International Prize-winning author that follows one young Omani woman as she builds a life for herself in Britain and reflects on the relationships that have made her from a “remarkable” writer who has “constructed her own novelistic form” (James Wood, The New Yorker). From Man Booker International Prize–winning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish. Zuhour, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she can’t help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Amir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhour left the Arabian Peninsula. As the historical narrative of Bint Amir’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhour’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips and dreams mingle with memories.
An examination of Khaldun’s Islamic history of the premodern world, its philosophical underpinnings, and the author himself. In his masterwork Muqaddimah, the Arab Muslim Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), a Tunisian descendant of Andalusian scholars and officials in Seville, developed a method of evaluating historical evidence that allowed him to identify the underlying causes of events. His methodology was derived from Aristotelian notions of nature and causation, and he applied it to create a dialectical model that explained the cyclical rise and fall of North African dynasties. The Muqaddimah represents the world’s first example of structural history and historical sociology. Four centuries before the European Enlightenment, this work anticipated modern historiography and social science. In Stephen F. Dale’s The Orange Trees of Marrakesh, Ibn Khaldun emerges as a cultured urban intellectual and professional religious judge who demanded his fellow Muslim historians abandon their worthless tradition of narrative historiography and instead base their works on a philosophically informed understanding of social organizations. His strikingly modern approach to historical research established him as the premodern world’s preeminent historical scholar. It also demonstrated his membership in an intellectual lineage that begins with Plato, Aristotle, and Galen; continues with the Greco-Muslim philosophers al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes; and is renewed with Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith, and Durkheim. Praise for The Orange Trees of Marrakesh “Stephen Dale’s book contains a careful account of the dizzying ups and downs of Ibn Khaldun’s political and academic career at courts in North Africa, Andalusia and Egypt. For these and other reasons The Orange Trees of Marrakesh deserves careful and respectful attention.” —Robert Irwin, The Times Literary Supplement (UK) “Historian Stephen Frederic Dale argues that Ibn Khaldun’s work is a key milestone on the road from Greek to Enlightenment thought, chiming with the radical reasoning of philosophers such as Montesquieu and Adam Smith.” —Barbara Kiser, Nature “Dale’s interest in Greco-Islamic philosophy contributes to this biography’s uniqueness . . . This work provides indispensable background information to truly appreciate this single most influential Islamic historian.” —R. W. Zens, Choice “Excellent scholarship on a fascinating subject.” —Publishers Weekly
Fifty years after its first publication, the multimillion-copy international bestseller is available again in English, sharing the heartbreaking tale of a gifted, mischievous, direly misunderstood boy growing up in Rio de Janeiro. When Zezé grows up, he wants to be a poet in a bow tie. For now the precocious young boy entertains himself by playing clever pranks on the residents of his Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, stunts for which his parents and siblings punish him severely. Lately, with his father out of work, the beatings have become harsher. Zezé’s only solace comes from his time at school, his hours secretly spent singing with a street musician, and the refuge he finds with his precious magical orange tree. When Zezé finally makes a real friend, his life begins to change, opening him up to human tenderness but also wrenching sorrow. Never out of print in Brazil since it was first published in 1968, My Sweet Orange Tree, inspired by the author’s own childhood, has been translated into many languages and has won the hearts of millions of young readers across the globe.
Beating the Odds of Life! Under the Orange Tree is a wonderful collection of three short stories. A crafted quality piece of writing, the prose is fluid with details that capture the attention of the reader. Right from the start, the plot is engaging and intriguing. Each story unfolds carefully, and to move the plot along, the used dialogue is insightful and very perceptive. The author uses a unique voice that allows the reader to interact and relate with the characters. The tone of the stories fluctuates from the depth of the human's spirit to the aspiration and the bliss of life. The protagonists are lifelike, and it feels like you have known them while leaving each story. Intense, provocative, humane, spirited, and real, Under the Orange Tree, is an intriguing and invigorating work of literature with the nuances of a thriller. Three Stories of Misfortune and the Triumph of the Human Spirit. Under the Orange Tree: The tragic lives of two women, mother and daughter-in-law, although begin more or less the same, unfold in different and unexpected ways after their husbands migrate to America. What transpires next crushes the world of the younger woman, and badly shakes the ground under the feet of the older one, and life, as they have known it, takes a drastic turn. Disgrace and humiliation are thrown harshly at both women's feet. The mother-in-law faces a difficult moral dilemma. The complexity of the circumstances brings her to a critical point. Her mind is foggy, doubtful. Her emotions are controversial. She has to make a difficult decision. Both women endure more than they had bargained for in their life, to come in the end, to a silent, strong bond of a lifetime. The aftermath is very much unexpected. Rina: The story elaborates the perturbing life of a young woman that was forced as a girl into womanhood before the prime of her life. She becomes the village's widow with no children at a very young age. Eventually, her reality comes at odds with the modest l
