Alone on Baraway Island, Ingrid lives after everyone has left, roaming the ruins, repairing what can be repaired, and catching fish and bodies that wash up on the island's shores. The young woman struggles to hide a big secret that could put her in danger, as the country witnesses the final months of World War II.
In this novel, Roy Jacobsen completes the story of Barawe Island, which began with "The Invisibles", with his delicate narration, natural images, and brief sentences that hide the truest and hottest feelings behind them.
“White Sea” is a novel about new beginnings that make their way from the ashes of a devastating war, about friendships and love, the faces of those passing by and the dead, and about people who remain where they are in the face of war, bidding farewell to the departed and receiving those returning, and monitoring the passing of days and the succession of seasons.
I do not see the universe as a collection of objects, theories, and phenomena. Rather, I see it as a vast stage on which actors move, driven by the complexities of the story and its plot. So when writing about the universe, it is natural to bring readers to the stage, and behind the scenes, to see firsthand for themselves how the scenes are prepared, how the lines are written, and where the events will take place later. My goal has always been to provide insight into how the universe works, which is more difficult than simply conveying facts. We will encounter times along the way - as in the best theatrical performances - when we smile, and at other times we frown when the universe calls us to do so, and at other times we will tremble in fear before it as well. Therefore, I see the book “Death in a Black Hole” as a gateway for the reader to everything that excites us, enlightens us, and terrifies us in this universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
How could she find boldness, ardor, detachment, and greatness in her? These qualities only appear when a freedom throws itself into an open future, emerging beyond every given thing. We lock a woman in a kitchen or a bedroom, and we are surprised that her horizon is limited. We cut its wings, and we are sorry that it does not know how to fly. Let us open up the future to her, and she will no longer have to stay in the present.
We show the same contradiction when we imprison her within the confines of her ego, or her home, and blame her for her narcissism, her selfishness, and what accompanies them: such as vanity, crankiness, evil...etc. We strip her of all possibility of tangible communication with others, so that in her experience she does not feel the call of solidarity, nor its benefits, since she is completely devoted to her family, and isolated; Thus, we cannot expect it to transcend itself towards the common good. She stubbornly stays in the only field she is familiar with; Where you can exert influence over things, and within it you find fleeting sovereignty.
The little boy escapes from the midwife's hands, and all attempts to catch him fail, until Abu Muharib, a retired policeman who suffers from rheumatism, intervenes, using his old hunting experience.
The chapters of the story continue, until the moment in which the reader finds himself facing a world in which reality is mixed with its strict natural laws, and imagination soaring on the same wings that changed the course of (the little one’s) life with her presence first, and her absence next..
What wings are these where scissors, scalpels, knives and guns lurk?
Who are those howling in the background?
What fate did those living below end up with?
The novel raises many questions, then stops at this point, shirking the burden of definitive answers, and assuming that the reader will not be let down by the wings of his imagination in reaching an answer.
Alone on Baraway Island, Ingrid lives after everyone has left, roaming the ruins, repairing what can be repaired, and catching fish and bodies that wash up on the island's shores. The young woman struggles to hide a big secret that could put her in danger, as the country witnesses the final months of World War II.
In this novel, Roy Jacobsen completes the story of Barawe Island, which began with "The Invisibles", with his delicate narration, natural images, and brief sentences that hide the truest and hottest feelings behind them.
“White Sea” is a novel about new beginnings that make their way from the ashes of a devastating war, about friendships and love, the faces of those passing by and the dead, and about people who remain where they are in the face of war, bidding farewell to the departed and receiving those returning, and monitoring the passing of days and the succession of seasons.
After his return to the island, Manuel decides to dig into the past to recover the details of the murder of the man he adopted. He also tries to get to know more about the wife of Khatha, the mysterious man whom he had only met briefly, but who left a great impression on him. “Khitha,” the absent man, is the most present in the novel, and his presence will change the fate of the lives of its characters, including his wife, who irrevocably left her previous life and went on to rediscover herself after her meeting with him.
In the novel “Soldiers Cry at Night,” Anna Maria Matute attempts to experiment with new narrative methods based on mixing the narrators’ voices so that the speech of all the characters seems, in one way or another, to be one continuous dialogue. The dense, highly sensitive and delicate spectrum of characters in this novel will continue to haunt the reader and motivate him to re-read the book, which ended prematurely, leaving many outstanding questions.
Stories that begin, develop, become complicated, and are interrupted before they resume again. Their heroines: Siranah, Selti, Salma, Khansi, Aishana, women whose paths and destinies intersected in that charming region of northeastern Syria, with which the “Berlin-Baghdad Railway” tampered with and the destinies of its residents. .
From the plains of Mardin, the cities of Amuda and Ras al-Ain, and the villages of Shorik, Kondak, and Tal Halaf, these women whisper secrets in their low, intermittent voices filled with fear and illness. But their stories and songs go beyond their bodies’ struggle with tuberculosis, to immortalize the struggles of the Yazidis, Syriacs, and Armenians with oppression, massacres, and eternal alienation.
In Women of Tuberculosis, Reber Youssef, with his poetic language and his special sensitivity, explores the northeastern region of Syria, including its diversity: ethnic, religious, and racial, relying on in-depth historical, geographical, and anthropological research into what people live in that part of the earth, but he... Through his work, he creates a curiosity to explore history once again, after the northeast of the country now has the face of a woman.
Will people change with time? What will the struggle for power be like seven hundred years from today? Where does the humiliation come from: from the other’s enslavement of you or from your submission to the idea of being a slave? What would change in the balance of good and evil if you had the opportunity to be in the place of your enemies: live among them, and see life from their perspective?
Many questions are raised by Pierce Brown in his vision of the world of the future, which seems more cruel, but does not differ in its laws from our current world. He tells the beginning of the story of Darrow, who belongs to the red class, the lowest class of the future society painted in colors. Like the people of his class, he works every day to make the surface of Mars a habitable place for life. He goes on dreaming of a better future for his children, believing that all classes of this society, including the golden leaders; They work for this dream, but he soon discovers the betrayal to which his people were exposed, and the illusion they live for. Motivated by the pain of a lost love, he embarks on a journey of revenge in order to overthrow his enemies, in which he is not deterred even by becoming one of them.
Remembering his childhood, Miguel tells of a wooden statue the size of a man, carved by a musical instrument maker before his death, so the people of Itape decided to place it at the top of the hill, so that it would become a landmark of the village. Massive events and wars take place, and the novel branches out to narrate the events of two decades of Paraguayan history, before returning to that hill with its steadfast statue, which has become very symbolic.
Rua Bastos shows history from the perspective of ordinary people, poignantly depicting their attempts to rebel against authority, revealing the brutality of the ironies of history when these people are forced to kill and die in senseless wars that they fight while standing with the very authority against which they rebel.
Using a linear sequence in narrating the events of his novel, and painting a huge mural about Paraguay, Rua Bastos writes, in a tight plot, his novel, which the great Argentine writer Borges said was one of America’s best novels...
Marie Noël does not know who her father is, nor does she know why her mother abandoned her immediately after her birth and left her in the care of Ranleys, nor does she know what prompted this mother to send a letter ten years later demanding her daughter.
The girl travels into the unknown, living with an emotionally cold mother, tormented by memories of the past. After she grows up, she goes to Boston to complete her studies, and marries an innovative jazz musician, while the question, “Who am I? And who is my family?” continues to haunt her in all the places she lives, and so she seeks to understand what happened before she was born, but a series of dark secrets... And the elusive facts are faced.
In this novel, which won the Prix Carbet de la Caraibe, Maryse Conde writes a tale of lost love and unwanted motherhood, capturing the voice of the Caribbean diaspora with grace and sweetness.
Zainab and Ahmed are two children who were separated from sharing school seats by Zainab’s move with her family to Ankara, and her boyfriend staying in Istanbul. The letters became their way of maintaining their friendship by exchanging funny stories, daily adventures, and discussing the oddities of the adult world: adults’ confusion in front of their managers, and parents’ desperation to showcase their children’s talents. “The wonderful ones” in front of the guests, and the parents’ insistence that they were all outstanding, obedient, honest, and of course the top of their class.
In this novel written for children, parents, and teachers alike, Aziz Nesin reconstructs events from the perspective through which children see the world, judging the behavior of adults and the double standards they live under. Like his always controversial books, the book - this time - provokes adults by revealing their image in the eyes of their children, thus asking: What happens to children when they grow up?
In the introduction to his first collection of short stories, the Chinese storyteller Lu Xun says that he found himself driven to write because he felt intense loneliness. He was not able to forget, or, rather, he was not able to forget completely; So, he wrote stories about the past.
This is exactly what prompted me to write: overwhelming loneliness. I also failed to forget, so I wrote what remained in my memory about Syria before the war.
Sometimes, exiles write about nostalgia for a country they miss and wish to return to. This is not like the nostalgia of Syrians: the country has completely changed, and even disappeared. We long for a place that does not exist, except in memory. And memory, as you know, writhes, colors, and churns. I am no exception, and my memory does not claim to be completely faithful to reality, but I tried hard to write exactly what you dictated to me.
Hopes, dreams, and losses are all fading quickly, and so is the country, and what remains of it is in us: as if it were a half-smile, or a summer cloud, or a bright comet passing quickly, only to disappear completely moments later, before the eyes of curious, bored viewers, indifferent to its fate...
Nathan Price, a Baptist minister, leaves civilized America, going on a missionary mission to the Belgian Congo, bringing with him his family, who carries with them everything they think they will need, but the African land surprises them, turning everything they brought into something worthless, and even their very existence will be full of challenges. Especially with the political events that are ravaging the country that is struggling to gain its independence, and the major powers are interfering in it, assassinating Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected prime minister.
The novel is alternately narrated by the mother, who loses something irreplaceable there, and her four daughters, each of whom narrates what is happening in her own way, trying to find her own separate path to salvation.
“The Poison Tree Gospel” is an intense journey in the vibrant African land, and a deep exploration of the other, written with a smooth narrative in which Barbara Kingsolver worked to transform the thorny threads of religion, politics, and race into a piece of literature of breathtaking beauty.
This novel was nominated for several literary awards, was translated into more than thirty languages, and sold more than four million copies around the world.
Love is the most dangerous and mysterious emotion. The most dangerous of these is because the lover often loses the ability to appreciate reality. Nothing makes him ready for death as love does. How many men lost their lives to reach their loved ones, and how many women defied their societies and were killed for a moment of connection with their beloved. History and literature tell us about many love stories that ended in death or madness. Because love is a powerful emotion that pushes the sails of the heart into the gates of an adventure with choppy waves. It does not value any danger, and it never accepts submission to mental trials.
As for the ambiguity of this emotion, it comes from ignorance of its causes. Most of the time, we do not fully know what we love about the person we love, and we often discover in him the opposite of what we thought when we loved him. Love - despite its arrogance - remains the most fragile of emotions, and often dissipates when it comes into contact with reality. Just as it blows like a storm, it can suddenly calm down, leaving... The air behind him was filled with dust.
Despite everything, love remains the most beautiful feelings that a person can possess, and the moments of connection that often precede a tragic end for lovers may be the happiest moments they live.
