Ali and His Russian Mother

Ali and His Russian Mother PDF Author: Alexandra Chreiteh
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
ISBN: 162371074X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
A fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today. Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak of the July War in 2006, the novel’s unnamed young protagonist reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel. Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens, when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother. As the two friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow, Chreiteh’s unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers—both of whom married Lebanese men and settled there—they are forced to reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is yet again being torn apart by violent conflict. Like Chreiteh’s acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic literature today.

Ali and His Russian Mother

Ali and His Russian Mother PDF Author: Alexandra Chreiteh
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
ISBN: 162371074X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today. Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak of the July War in 2006, the novel’s unnamed young protagonist reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel. Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens, when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother. As the two friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow, Chreiteh’s unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers—both of whom married Lebanese men and settled there—they are forced to reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is yet again being torn apart by violent conflict. Like Chreiteh’s acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic literature today.

Ali and His Russian Mother

Ali and His Russian Mother PDF Author: Alexandra Chreiteh
Publisher: Interlink Books
ISBN: 9781566560924
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A fresh, daring voice in arabic literature today. Alexandra Chreiteh’s Ali and his Russian Mother is at once an ordinary and extraordinary story of two young people in Lebanon. At the outbreak of the July War in 2006, the novel’s unnamed young protagonist reconnects with her childhood friend and develops a little crush on him, as they flee the bombs unleashed upon their country by Israel. Displaced, along with a million others across the country, she and her Russian mother have joined an evacuation for Russian citizens, when she again meets up with Ali, her former schoolmate from the South, who also has a Russian (Ukrainian) mother. As the two friends reunite, chat, and bond during a harrowing bus caravan across the Syrian border to Lattakia, en route to Moscow, Chreiteh’s unique, comic sense of the absurd speaks to contradictions faced by a young generation in Lebanon now, sounding out taboos surrounding gender, sexual, religious, and national identities. Carrying Russian passports like their mothers—both of whom married Lebanese men and settled there—they are forced to reflect upon their choices, and lack of them, in a country that is yet again being torn apart by violent conflict. Like Chreiteh’s acclaimed first novel, Always Coca-Cola, this story employs deceptively simple language and style to push the boundaries of what can be talked about in Arabic fiction. Again focused on the preoccupations of young people and their hopes for the future, Ali and his Russian Mother represents a fresh, daring voice in Arabic literature today.

Always Coca-Cola

Always Coca-Cola PDF Author: Alexandra Chreiteh
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
ISBN: 1623710057
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
The narrator of Always Coca-Cola, Abeer Ward (fragrant rose, in Arabic), daughter of a conservative family, admits wryly that her name is also the name of her father’s flower shop. Abeer’s bedroom window is filled by a view of a Coca-Cola sign featuring the image of her sexually adventurous friend, Jana. From the novel’s opening paragraph—“When my mother was pregnant with me, she had only one craving. That craving was for Coca-Cola”—first-time novelist Alexandra Chreiteh asks us to see, with wonder, humor, and dismay, how inextricably confused naming and desire, identity and branding are. The names—and the novel’s edgy, cynical humor—might be recognizable across languages, but Chreiteh’s novel is first and foremost an exploration of a specific Lebanese milieu. Critics in Lebanon have called the novel “an electric shock.”

In Memory of Memory

In Memory of Memory PDF Author: Maria Stepanova
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811228843
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
An exploration of life at the margins of history from one of Russia’s most exciting contemporary writers Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize Winner of the MLA Lois Roth Translation Award With the death of her aunt, the narrator is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms—essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and historical documents—Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.

Would I Lie to You?

Would I Lie to You? PDF Author: Aliya Ali-Afzal
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1538755033
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In this “total page-turner,” wife and mother Faiza is about to find what happens when you have your dream life and are about to lose it... but only if you're caught (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author of The Sanatorium). At the school gates, Faiza fits in. It took a few years, but now the snobbish white mothers who mistook her for the nanny treat her as one of their own. She's learned to crack their subtle codes, speak their language of fashion and vacations and haircuts. You'd never guess, seeing her at the trendy kids' parties and the leisurely coffee mornings, that her childhood was spent being bullied and being embarrassed of her poor Pakistani immigrant parents. When her husband Tom loses his job in finance, he stays calm. Something will come along, and in the meantime, they can live off their savings. But Faiza starts to unravel. Creating the perfect life and raising the perfect family comes at a cost – and the money Tom put aside has gone. Faiza will have to tell him she spent it all. Unless she doesn't... It only takes a second to lie to Tom. Now Faiza has mere weeks to find $100,000. If anyone can do it, Faiza can. She's had to fight for what she has, and she'll fight to keep it. But as the clock ticks down and Faiza desperately tries to put things right, she has to ask herself: how much more should she sacrifice to live someone else's idea of the dream life?

The Wish Maker

The Wish Maker PDF Author: Ali Sethi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101061286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
From the world-renowned singer-songwriter, a debut novel about a fatherless boy growing up in a family of outspoken women in contemporary Pakistan, The Wish Maker is a brilliant tale about sacrifice, betrayal, and indestructible friendship. Zaki Shirazi and his female cousin Samar Api were raised to consider themselves “part of the same litter.” In a household run by Zaki's crusading political journalist mother and iron-willed grandmother, it was impossible to imagine a future that could hold anything different for each of them. But when adolescence approaches, the cousins’ fates diverge, and Zaki is forced to question the meaning of family, selfhood, and commitment to those he loves most. Chronicling world-changing events that have never been so intimately observed in fiction, and brimming with unmistakable warmth and humor, The Wish Maker is the powerful account of a family and an era, a story that shows how, even in the most rapidly shifting circumstances, there are bonds that survive the tugs of convention, time, and history.

Born in Jerusalem, Born Palestinian

Born in Jerusalem, Born Palestinian PDF Author: Jacob J. Nammar
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
ISBN: 1623710197
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
When Jacob Nammar was a young boy growing up in Harret al-Nammareh, his family, his friends, and the streets of his West Jerusalem neighborhood were the center of his life. It wasn’t long, however, before his existence was turned upside down when his family was forced out of their home during al-nakba, the catastrophe that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of nearly 750,000 natives and the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and towns. In this heartwarming memoir, Jacob paints a vivid portrait of Palestinian life—from his childhood days in pre-1948 Jerusalem, the struggles of the Palestinian community under Israeli rule, to his ultimate decision to leave for America at age 23. Readers will laugh, cry, and be inspired by this charming coming of age story set amid the backdrop of one of the most tragic historical events that engulfed the region.

Native Believer

Native Believer PDF Author: Ali Eteraz
Publisher: Akashic Books
ISBN: 1617754595
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
“[A] wickedly funny Philadelphia picaresque about a secular Muslim’s identity crisis in a country waging a never-ending war on terror.” —O, The Oprah Magazine Ali Eteraz’s much-anticipated debut novel is the story of M., a supportive husband, adventureless dandy, lapsed believer, and second-generation immigrant who wants nothing more than to host parties and bring children into the world as full-fledged Americans. As M.’s life gradually fragments around him—a wife with a chronic illness, a best friend stricken with grief, a boss jeopardizing a respectable career—M. spins out into the pulsating underbelly of Philadelphia, where he encounters others grappling with fallout from the war on terror. Among the pornographers and converts to Islam, punks and wrestlers, M. confronts his existential degradation and the life of a second-class citizen. Darkly comic, provocative, and insightful, Native Believer is a startling vision of the contemporary American experience and the human capacity to shape identity and belonging at all costs. “Native Believer stands as an important contribution to American literary culture: a book quite unlike any I’ve read in recent memory, which uses its characters to explore questions vital to our continuing national discourse around Islam.” —The New York Times Book Review “A page-turning contemporary fiction that addresses burning issues about the very essence of identity, and without question Ali Eteraz is a writer’s writer, one whose ear for the English language is just as acute as fellow naturalized Americans Vladimir Nabokov (born in Russia) or Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnam).” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga PDF Author: Andreas Johns
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820467696
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Baba Yaga is a well-known witch from the folklore tradition of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A fascinating and colorful character, she resembles witches of other traditions but is in many ways unique. Living in the forest in a hut that stands and moves on chicken legs, she travels in a mortar with a pestle and sweeps away her tracks with a broom. In some tales she tries to harm the protagonist, while in others she is helpful. This book investigates the image and ambiguity of Baba Yaga in detail and considers the meanings she has for East Slavic culture. Providing a broad survey of folktales and other sources, it is the most thorough study of Baba Yaga yet published and will be of interest to students of anthropology, comparative literature, folklore, and Slavic and East European studies.

The Clash of Fundamentalisms

The Clash of Fundamentalisms PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789608538
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
The aerial attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, a global spectacle of unprecedented dimensions, generated an enormous volume of commentary. The inviolability of the American mainland, breached for the first time since 1812, led to extravagant proclamations by the pundits. It was a new world-historical turning point. The 21st century, once greeted triumphantly as marking the dawn of a worldwide neo-liberal civilization, suddenly became menaced. The choice presented from the White House and its supporters was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against terrorism or be damned. Tariq Ali challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that what we have experienced is the return of History in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides: 'Allah's revenge,' 'God is on Our Side' and 'God Bless America.' The visible violence of September 11 was the response to the invisible violence that has been inflicted on countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Chechnya. Some of this has been the direct responsibility of the United States and Russia. In this wide-ranging book that provides an explanation for both the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and new forms of Western colonialism, Tariq Ali argues that many of the values proclaimed by the Enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American Empire as a new emancipatory project are misguided.