Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories

Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories PDF Author: Alifa Rifaat
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478615494
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book Here

Book Description
“More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam.

Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories

Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories PDF Author: Alifa Rifaat
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478615494
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book Here

Book Description
“More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam.

Changes

Changes PDF Author: Ama Ata Aidoo
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 1558619143
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Commonwealth Prize–winning novel of “intense power . . . examining the role of women in modern African society” by the acclaimed Ghanaian author (Publishers Weekly). Living in Ghana’s capital city of Accra with a postgraduate degree and a career in data analysis, Esi Sekyi is a thoroughly modern African woman. Perhaps that is why she decides to divorce her husband after enduring yet another morning’s marital rape. Though her friends and family are baffled by her decision (after all, he doesn’t beat her!), Esi holds fast. When she falls in love with a married man—wealthy, and able to arrange a polygamous marriage—the modern woman finds herself trapped in a new set of problems. Witty and compelling, Aidoo’s novel, according to Manthia Diawara, “inaugurates a new realist style in African literature.” In an afterword to this edition, Tuzyline Jita Allan “places Aidoo’s work in a historical context and helps introduce this remarkable writer [who] sheds light on women’s problems around the globe” (Publishers Weekly).

So Long a Letter

So Long a Letter PDF Author: Mariama Bâ
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478611235
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Get Book Here

Book Description
Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Considered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

The Poor Christ of Bomba

The Poor Christ of Bomba PDF Author: Mongo Beti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1804543438
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Award-winning author Mongo Beti presents The Poor Christ of Bomba, a cutting satirical critique on the role of Catholic missionaries and French colonialism in 1930s Cameroon. A revolutionary novel in its time. In the small village of Bomba, a French missionary priest is instructed to build a parish for its residents. Father Drumont has one important task; to save the village from heresy by preparing its girls for Christian marriage. A servant in Father Drumont's house, a young boy named Denis is reliant on the priest's generosity after the death of his mother. In the eyes of the Catholic church, Denis is the perfect example of the African heathen saved by Christianity – but the reality of what happens behind closed doors in much more sinister. 'One of the foremost African writers of the independence generation.' Guardian

Iran and the Deccan

Iran and the Deccan PDF Author: Keelan Overton
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025304894X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad. Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.

Rediscovering Albania

Rediscovering Albania PDF Author: Adam YAMEY
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1326807102
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adam YameyOs informative travelogue offers a new and interesting look at Albania: its valiant people, its intriguing history, its wonderful landscapes, and its myriad attractions. The author, who first visited the country in 1984 when it was ruled by a Stalinist dictatorship, rediscovers Albania now that it has become a democracy. Profusely illustrated, Rediscovering Albania introduces one of EuropeOs lesser-known countries."

Distant View of a Minaret

Distant View of a Minaret PDF Author: Alifa Rifaat
Publisher: Heinemann
ISBN: 9780435909123
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book Here

Book Description
Alifa Rifaat, an Egyptian, lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.

Love in a Headscarf

Love in a Headscarf PDF Author: Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
Publisher: Aurum
ISBN: 1845138287
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
‘At the age of thirteen, I knew I was destined to marry John Travolta. One day he would arrive on my North London doorstep, fall madly in love with me and ask me to marry him. Then he would convert to Islam and become a devoted Muslim.’ Shelina is keeping a very surprising secret under her headscarf – she wants to fall in love. Torn between the Buxom Aunties, romantic comedies and mosque Imams, she decides to follow the arranged-marriage route to finding Mr Right, Muslim-style. Shelina’s captivating journey begins as a search for the One, but along the way she also discovers her faith and herself. A memoir with a hilarious twist from one of Britain’s leading female Muslim writers, Love in a Headscarf is an entertaining, fresh and unmissable insight into what it means to be a young British Muslim woman. Shelina Janmohamed is a columnist for the Muslim News and EMEL magazine and regularly contributes to the Guardian., the BBC and Channel 4. She is much in demand as a commentator on radio and television and has appeared on programmes including Newsnight and The Heaven and Earth Show. Her award-winning blog, Spirit 21, is hugely popular. Love in a Headscarf is her first book.

Sparknotes 101

Sparknotes 101 PDF Author: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
Publisher: Spark Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781411403383
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 644

Get Book Here

Book Description
Covers 65 major works of women's literature, from Louisa May Alcott to Virginia Woolf. Each concise note contains biographical information on the writer; plot overview; character list and detailed character analyses explanations of major themes, motifs, and symbols; and the most important quotations, followed by explanations of why they are significant. Sample A+ student essays are included.

Juletane

Juletane PDF Author: Myriam Warner-Vieyra
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478622660
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 109

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this powerful and moving novel, Myriam Warner-Vieyra sensitively portrays the complexities of cross-cultural relationships and, in particular, the female predicament. When Helene, a self-reliant career woman, is packing her belongings for a move and imminent marriage for which she is reluctant, she unearths a faded old book. It is the diary of young Juletane, a confused, sheltered West Indian woman struggling to find herself. Written over three weeks, it records her short life: childhood in France, marriage to an African student, and an eager return with him to Africa, the land of her ancestors. It is Juletane’s diary that brings her and Helene together. Juletane does not fit into her husband’s traditional African family, especially the Muslim cultural demands of polygamy. Full of gentle ironies, Juletane is a story about alienation, madness, shattered dreams: the disillusioned West Indian outsider’s disenchantment with Africa. Myriam Warner-Vieyra looks at women’s lives, at the paths they have taken, at the possibilities open to women in the Caribbean, in Africa, in life. She forces readers, through the double narrative of Juletane and Helene, to reexamine easy assumptions, to look again at safe generalizations. Includes valuable Introduction 2014 by the translator.