My uncle's donkey is allowed in the house! And in the house, the donkey gets up to . . . 'This is definitely the kind of book you could read to your little ones, time and time again, without getting bored rigid.' The Age 'Reading this book comes with a warning; It will most likely engender a Christmas request from the reader for their very own dancing, juggling, flower-eating donkey.' Magpies magazine
Saudi Arabia has changed beyond all recognition in the past few decades, and the country's writers have been pre-eminent in grappling with the dilemmas, the cultural jarring and the identity problems thrown up by such an accelerated pace of change. "Beyond The Dunes" opens up for the first time the diversity and richness of contemporary Saudi Arabian literature to an English-speaking audience in this uniquely accessible book. Mansour al Hazimi, Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Ezzat Khattab have put together a varied selection of poetry, short stories, novel extracts, personal accounts, drama and essays which provide a fascinating insight into the challenges and tensions of a culture that is striving to balance globalisation and modernity with highly cherished traditional values. The social dislocation experienced by Saudi Arabians finds vivid formal expression in the dramas included in this volume, which may surprise many Western readers with their bold experimentalism and surrealist elements. Novelist Ahmad al Siba'I, a more traditional writer, offers a reflective, humanistic response to the world, whilst poets such as Ghassan al-Khunaizi, Ahmad al Mulla and Huda al Daghfaq reflect both the rich stylistic heritage of Saudi literature and the new techniques and outlook of modern Arabic poetry. Even when they are harking back to the vanished world of pre-modern Saudi Arabia, many of these writers reflect generational dialogues and an awareness of contemporary resonances. "Beyond the Dunes" places women's voices firmly in the centre of the Saudi literary canon for the first time, reflecting the increasing pre-eminence of writers such as Raja' 'Alem, Qumasha al-Ulayyan, Noura al-Ghamidi and Fawziyya Abu Khalid. This ground-breaking book provides an indispensable introduction to the thoughts, forms and expressions of one of the most complex and fascinating of world literatures at a moment of pivotal transformation.
Cadichon is a lively and intelligent donkey who wants his readers to know that although he was naughty in his youth and was punished severely, he is now reformed. His main aim is to refute the stereotypical image of donkeys as ignorant and stubborn and reveal, through his stories, the true, gentle and wise nature of donkeys. Cadichon's antics are guaranteed to make you laugh! Cadichon can also be vengeful when overworked and underfed. His retaliations and plans for revenge will have readers shaking their heads in disapproval but ultimately, as Cadichon encounters love and acceptance through his adventures, we come to admire his bravery and loyalty.
From 1812 until 1826, young Ernst von Rosenberg served as a soldier under the flags of four different countries: the Russian, the Prussian, the Texas, and the Mexican.
After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land. But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed. Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.
A refugee’s exhilarating story of displacement and perseverance in the face of extremism and the American who is forever changed by what she hears. When Cindy Miller met Lailoma Shahwali, who was altering her daughter’s wedding dress, she expected their interactions would be brief. But in Lailoma she found not just a seamstress, but a survivor who would open up about her remarkable experiences in her native Afghanistan under Taliban rule, her husband’s brutal murder in front of Lailoma and her young son, her mountain escape into Pakistan, and her journey to a new life in the United States. A breathtaking account of triumph against all odds, The Alterations Lady documents Lailoma’s childhood as an Afghan girl, the indignities she endured when the Taliban seized her beloved country and stripped her of her hard-won rights, her relentless determination to protect her child and offer him a better life, and her navigation of the complicated United States immigration system. This timeless story of one refugee’s pursuit of the American dream and her search for sanctuary in a foreign land is a poignant reminder of the plight of refugees everywhere and the possibilities offered by a nation of immigrants.
She may have been holding a gun, or an axe, or her hiked-up skirts, but she was there, in the Klondike of the Gold Rush. And her decision to venture everything on the dream of northern gold was in every way bolder and riskier than any man’s. In Frontier Spirit, Jennifer Duncan celebrates the lives of women who, in defiance of traditional expectations, left their homes, their families, and their professions, to make the arduous journey through a punishing climate and unfamiliar wilderness to seek their fortunes in the Klondike. The story of women in the Klondike begins with the strong and knowledgeable women who were there before the race for riches began -- First Nations women like Shaaw Tláa, whose experience and traditional skills were critical to the survival of her white prospector husband, and ultimately, to the discovery that sparked the Gold Rush. The white women who joined the Klondike Stampede came from all walks of life: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, single and married. Wealthy socialite Martha Black left her world of comfort to pursue a career as a miner, mill manager, and politician on the northern frontier. Belinda Mulrooney, an Irish farm girl, arrived in Dawson with a quarter to her name but used her business acumen and canny resourcefulness to turn the shantytown into a city and herself into its richest woman. And then there’s Kate Rockwell, a working-class girl from Kansas City, whose thirst for fame and adulation led her over the treacherous waters of the Whitehorse rapids and fired her ascent to the title of Queen of the Klondike. Duncan has spent the last five years experiencing Dawson City in all its seasons and, like the women who came before her, she has fallen under the spell of the North, coming to love its wilderness, its challenges, and its rugged glory. With remarkable empathy, imagination and personal insight, Duncan creates an engrossing portrait of the splendour of the Yukon, breathing life into the stories of the daring and diverse women of the Klondike and the grandeur of the adventurers who gambled everything to find their fortunes there.
