Showing results by narrator "Neil Shah" in All Categories

Using his unique lens as a critical race theorist and law professor, Khaled A. Beydoun captures the many ways in which law, policy, and official state rhetoric have fueled the frightening resurgence of Islamophobia in the US.

Set in an upper-middle-class Tel Aviv apartment building, this best-selling and warmly acclaimed Israeli novel examines the interconnected lives of its residents, whose turmoils, secrets, unreliable confessions, and problematic decisions reveal a society in the midst of an identity crisis.

An ailing farmer in rural Iran unearths an extraordinary find: two parsnips, grown together and looking for all the world like entwined lovers. For now, the sublime treasure is his secret. Wrapping it in a silk handkerchief, he nestles it away in a dresser drawer. Day after day, he gazes at their unmistakable rapture, reminded of the long-gone youthful passions he once shared with his wife. So, too, he mourns the inevitable - the eventual decay of the parsnips in love. When he decides to share his discovery with the world, his life and the lives of those around him connect and change.

Known as the twice-born - first into the flesh and again when initiated into their vocation - the Brahmins are a caste devoted to sacred learning. But what Taseer finds in Benares, the holy city of death also known as Varanasi, is a window on an India as internally fractured as his own continent-bridging identity.

After Kevin Corley’s military career came to an ill-fated end, he answered another call of duty, unaware that he was walking into a ruse orchestrated by one of the government’s most enterprising agents. John Leonard was posing online as an underworld figure to entrap those who were predisposed to crime. When he lured Lieutenant Corley into his scheme, he didn’t know how wrong it would go. And Corley had no idea he had so much left to lose.

In the occupied city of Tejomaya, calor—a magical fossil fuel—is found only in the blood rains that fall from the sky. While a six-month drought has brought Tejomaya to a desperate standstill, rumors of a secret stash of magic propel three unlikely treasure seekers to risk everything. Tenacious and street-smart Zain Jatav has been forced to steal calor for her slumlord bosses for years. Finding the magic reserve might be her only key to freedom. But she'll have to contend with Iravan Khotar, a slumlord himself and an ambitious revolutionary hoping to use the same magic to save his people.

Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.

In December 2012, the violent gang rape of a young Indian woman in Delhi shocked the world. India was a country of booming modernisation twinned with centuries-old cultural riches. Was the cruelty of the assault indicative of something profoundly disturbing lurking beneath the surface? Sunny Hundal's arresting exploration of how Indian society treats its women argues exactly this. As a country, India has a disproportionate amount of men to women. They are financial and often social burdens upon their parents.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, there has been an overwhelming demand for information about Islam, and recent events - the war in Iraq, terrorist attacks both failed and successful, debates throughout Europe over Islamic dress, and many others - have raised new questions in the minds of policymakers and the general public. This newly updated edition of What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam is the best single source for clearly presented, objective information about these new developments, and for answers to questions about the origin and traditions of Islam.

In India in 1947 the country is coming apart - and so is 13-year-old Bilal's life. He is determined to protect his dying father from the news of Partition, news that he knows will break his father's heart. With spirit and determination, and with the help of his good friends, Bilal builds an elaborate deception, even printing false pages of the local newspaper to hide the signs of national unrest. All Bilal wants is for his father to die in peace. But that means Bilal has a very complicated relationship with the truth.

Christians have lived in Palestine since the earliest days of the Jesus movement. The Palestinian church predates Islam. Yet Palestinian Christians find themselves marginalized and ostracized. In the heated tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the voices of Palestinian Christians are often unheard and ignored. This remarkable book provides an opportunity to hear the realities of life on the ground from a leading Palestinian pastor and theologian.

Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens. But the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most. Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community? Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel - a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

Eshkol Nevo's darkest, most thrilling novel to date, Inside Information weaves together three turbulent and unconventional love stories, diving deep into the enigma that lies at the heart of all intimacy, whether between a man and a woman, a parent and a child, or a person and what they've lost.

A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work – labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised. Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. Undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses. Roustabouts who drill for oil on offshore rigs. And drone operators who kill people from thousands of miles away.

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition has known over 13 centuries of continuous development. During that time, it has spread among the neighboring peoples - the Mongol, Himalayan, and Siberian peoples, Manchus and Chinese. At its height, it has been practiced in regions as far west as the Volga river and to the east in Beijing. Its capacity for creative adaptation is demonstrated by its recent growth in Europe and America.

Peace between Arabs and Jews seems forever out of reach, both sides caught in a never-ending cycle of violence and revenge. But while treaties and other top-down solutions have had little lasting effect, peacemakers on the ground are creating real change - within themselves and with their enemies. In Bridges Across an Impossible Divide, American professor Marc Gopin offers an unprecedented exploration of the spiritual lives of Arab and Jewish peacemakers who have evolved deep friendships despite decades of war and suffering on all sides.

When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block, receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son's, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. Jerry is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs Unger, but the circumstances surrounding the scandal cause him to doubt the exact nature of her philanthropy.

The Tirukkural (honoured Kural) is one of the world's greatest literary and philosophical masterpieces. Composed in Tamil by Tiruvalluvar sometime between 2 BCE and 5 CE, its succinct couplets seek to explain and guide the listener through life's various situations: political, spiritual, domestic and social.

Fox is a memory editor—one of the best—gifted with the skill to create real life in the digital world. When he wakes up in Field of Reeds Centre for Memory Reconstruction with no idea how he got there, the therapists tell him he was a victim in a terrorist bombing by Khadija Banks, the pioneer of memory editing technology turned revolutionary. A bombing which shredded the memory archives of all its victims, including his husband Gabe. Thrust into reconstructions of his memories exploded from the fragments that survived the blast, Fox tries to rebuild his life, his marriage and himself.

Gul has spent her life running. She has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in the kingdom of Ambar, girls with such birthmarks have been disappearing for years. Gul’s mark is what caused her parents’ murder at the hand of King Lohar’s ruthless soldiers and forced her into hiding to protect her own life. So when a group of rebel women called the Sisters of the Golden Lotus rescue her, take her in, and train her in warrior magic, Gul wants only one thing: revenge.