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Children's & YAAugust 2013Ghadi & Rawan
by Fatima Sharafeddine and Samar Mahfouz Barraj
Ghadi is a young teenager of Lebanese origin, living in Brussels. Like so many Lebanese emigrants, Ghadi’s family comes to Lebanon during the summer holidays. Ghadi spends his summer with his cousin and friends in the family’s mountain house, among whom Rawan, the daughter of his grand-parent’s neighbors. Ghadi and Rawan are very close friends, and at the end of summer, when each of them goes their separate ways, they stay in touch via e-mail. The novel is built on their correspondence. From the moment the plane lands, Ghadi misses Lebanon and his friends, dreaming of the next summer. He has many friends at school, but he is also bullied by an older boy. Rawan, with her sense of humor and creativity is quite popular among her friends, and that year decides to run for the elections of the students’ representatives. Tensions at home are nevertheless more and more palpable, as Rawan’s father regularly comes home in a very bad temper. Rawan is convinced that her parents are on the verge of divorce. Having overheard a phone conversation, she also believes that her father has a lover. This situation is distressing, and Rawan has trouble concentrating at school. She feels lonely, and her anxiety pushes her away even from her closest friends. Meanwhile, in Brussels, Ghadi gets mixed up in drugs, unwillingly, and falls under the power of the boy who’s been bullying him. Each on their own, Rawan and Ghadi will find ways out of their problems, and will learn and grow from their experiences, while their friendship strengthens. With this novel for young adolescents (13 year olds), the two authors tackle issues that are central in the lives of young teens all over the world. The relationship to family members, to friends and classmates, drugs and violence, unemployment, racism, exile, identity and roots, are all issues that are touched upon in the novel.
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Children's & YAFebruary 2014Red Line
by Samar Mahfouz BarrajIllustrated By: Mona Yakzan and Mira El-Myr
Mazen, a young boy, is one day surprised by their neighbor Bassam shouting with anger in the street “My parking spot is a red line!” Does this mean he plans to paint the street red, asks Mazen to his mother? The mother explains to Mazen that what Bassam means is simply that no one is to park in his place. The notion is still vague to Mazen: Why red? Does it have anything to do with red traffic lights? The mother tries again “When something is a red line, it means that it is off limits to others”. In this illustrated album, Samar Barraj boldly addresses the delicate issue of child sexual abuse. Acknowledging the complexity of the boundary it tackles, the book determines it through examples the mother and child raise in their conversation. Mazen’s spontaneous remarks and comments point out the difficulty of defining this red line, and make of the book a realistic example of such a conversation. The illustrations develop the notion further, by representing situations in which the red line might be crossed – one may be on his bicycle, at his computer, or approached by a respectable-looking old man in the street. The body parts are not named, but are represented in a naïve drawing Mazen made, though the text insists on the importance of preserving the body as a whole. The colorful images and constant presence of the mother and parents make of the book a reassuring experience despite the gravity of the topic.
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Humanities & Social SciencesNaguib Mahfouz Annuals: About Youth and Freedom
by Naguib Mahfouz
Religion is taught in schools as if a branch of science consisting of some Koranic verses, prophetic tradition (Hadith), creed, worships, and biography! Pupils usually study such items by heart, then they go to exam and forget all. Religion is neither a branch of science nor a branch of material knowledge. Religion is a spiritual education that had to be applied in society. It is felt in the way people behave or conduct. Sometimes we meet a clever pupil but he has bad manners! Another, may get high marks in religion but dismissed out of the school for his ill behaviors and bad manners. I believe that religion must be taught as a spiritual education surrounded by a sphere of sympathy and affection. It is something felt by heart, not studied by heart. Teachers have to adress minds to make pupils convinced. They have to teach them biography of the prophet and also of the orthodox Caliphs. They have to select Koran verses according to “the age and the need”. For example Koranic verses dealing with” prayers”, must be studied in an early stage. Then Koranic verses dealing with “fasting”. After that comes verses dealing with moral conducts. In an advanced stage or secondary school, students can study views, ideas, conceptions, visions and philosophy of Islamic eminent characters, as well as eminent characters of other religions. There is a sort of a deflagrated competition between different religions, though they are similar in concepts and attitudes. Also, rivalary between Islam and Western civilization, and communism, is considered. Western civilization has its own entity. It is an integral doctrine having its theories and applications. Western civilization admits human rights and free economy. It could achieve marvellous progress in different fields of life. At the other hand communism also has its own integral doctrine with a private philosophy, economy and ruling systems. It aspires equality between all people, regardless to their colour or race. As a matter of fact it could achieve marevellous progress in different fields of life. Islam stands in between those two different civilizations, trying to get up and rise after a long sleep in the darkness of stagnancy and retardation. Lately, Islam did not achieve adequate progress in fields like modern science, technology, and material power. But it didn’t surrender, because it is till standing as a civilization having its own historical dignity and tradition. But now it is working hard to compensate what it did lose and indemnify what has gone, without contradicting its message and entity.
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Children's & YAMay 2019Mila's Pearl
by Fatima Sharafeddine
A painful incident at school leads Mila to take a very important but secret decision, which is to lose her excess weight. She is so determined to accomplish her goal in order to prove to everyone, especially those who bully her, that she is totally capable of it. Mila gets carried away with her goal to the extent of reaching the state of Anorexia. She denies having a problem for the longest time, until she realizes that her condition has become life threatening. This YA novel deals with the issue of Anorexia, an eating disorder that is becoming more common in many modern cities of our days. The author built the character of Mila based on several testimonies of teen agers and their accounts on their sufferings with Anorexia. Is it true that once Anorexic, always Anorexic? Mila will find out the hard way.
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Children's & YAThe Dinoraf
by Hessa Al Muhairi
An egg has hatched, and what comes out of it? A chicken? No. A turtle? No. It’s a dinosaur. But where is his family? The little dinosaur searches the animal kingdom for someone who looks like him and settles on the giraffe. In this picture book by educator and author Hessa Al Muhairi, with illustrations by Sura Ghazwan, a dinosaur sets out in search of animals like him. He finds plenty of animals, but none that look the same...until he meets the giraffe. This story explores identity and belonging and teaches children about accepting differences in carefully crafted language.
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June 2017Der unglaubliche Lauf der Fatima Brahimi
Originalausgabe:
by Banscherus, Jürgen / Illustriert von Bayer, Michael
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Humanities & Social SciencesJuly 2024British Bangladeshi Muslims in the East End
The changing landscape of dress and language
by Fatima Rajina
Drawing on the everyday experiences of 43 British-Bangladeshi Muslims living in East London, this book explores stories of migration and belonging vis-à-vis dress and language. In narrating those stories, the book is framed within the broader socio-political conversations happening regarding Muslims in Britain and their 'place' in this society. Recent work on Muslims focuses on their religious identity and its formation, not paying attention to the role of dress and language. With the former, much of it tends to, obsessively, focus on Muslim women only. This book, alternatively, explores religious identity formation in addition to examining the British-Bangladeshi Muslim community's relationship with their ethnic identity vis-à-vis dress and language. As such, the analysis provides a rich, bottom-up analysis of the community, and readers will be able to understand a community holistically, away from the over-sensationalised community within broader socio-political context.
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1989Morgen werden sie mich hängen
Südafrika: Die Geschichte des jugendlichen Attentäters Andrew Zondo
by Meer, Fatima
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October 2018
All of this is true
Ruhm kann tödlich sein
by Peñaflor, Lygia Day
Als die Freunde Miri, Soleil, Jonah und Penny sich mit der exzentrischen Bestsellerautorin Fatima Ro anfreunden, glauben sie, dass ihr Leben endlich den ersehnten Kick bekommt. Sie teilen sich gegenseitig ihre tiefsten Geheimnisse mit und gründen sogar einen Fan-Club für die Autorin. Diese wiederum lässt die Clique hautnah an ihrem Leben teilhaben - bis sie plötzlich in ihrem neuen Buch ein skandalträchtiges Geheimnis verrät, das eine tödliche Tragödie auslöst. Die Schülerinnen müssen sich entsetzt eingestehen, dass in dieser Freundschaft niemand ehrlich gespielt hat.
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December 2007Die Romantischen
Roman
by Pankaj Mishra, Barbara Schaden
Samar, ein weltfremder junger Mann von knapp 20 Jahren, Anwärter auf den Staatsdienst, ist meist in ein Buch vertieft; in den Klassikern der europäischen Literatur sucht er seinen Lebenssinn. Dann trifft er in Benares, der heiligen Stadt am Gangesufer, auf zwei Frauen, die seine Gefühle in Aufruhr versetzen: die eine, Miss West, führt ihn in eine Gruppe europäischer Aussteiger ein, die in Indien auf der Suche nach einer Art exotischer Wahrheit sind, die andere, Catherine, öffnet ihn für die Liebe und das Unglück. Pankaj Mishras Erfolgsroman Die Romantischen ist das Drama einer Selbstfindung und zugleich ein vielschichtiges Porträt des modernen Indien. Sinnlich und atmosphärisch, in der Tradition von E. M. Forster und V. S. Naipaul, erzählt der Autor von der illusionären Romanze zwischen Ost und West.
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Children's & YAWhat's On Your Face?
by Fatima Jamal Abdullah
Amin, a little boy, is the narrator of this story. Ill with the vitiligo disease, which causes his skin to have large white stains, Amin struggles in school.As Amin describes his daily challenges, young readers gain a better understanding of his behaviors and learn valuable lessons about tolerance and acceptance. As his parents say, what matters is that he has a white heart, pure and kind
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January 2013The Madmen of Bethlehem
by Osama Alaysa
Adopting the story-within-a-story structure of Arabian Nights, author Osama Alaysa weaves together a collection of stories portraying centuries of oppression endured by the Palestinian people. This remarkable novel eloquently brings together fictional characters alongside real-life historical figures in a complex portrayal of Bethlehem and the Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the West Bank. The common thread connecting each tale is madness, in all its manifestations. Psychological madness, in the sense of clinical mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, finds expression alongside acts of social and political madness. Together, these accounts of individuals and communities provide a gateway into the histories of the city of Bethlehem and Palestine. They paint a picture of the centuries of political oppression that the Palestinian people have endured, from the days of the Ottoman Empire to the years following the Oslo Accords, and all the way to 2012 (when the novel was written). The novel is divided into three sections, each containing multiple narratives. The first section, “The Book of a Genesis,” describes the physical spaces and origins of Bethlehem and Dheisheh Refugee Camp. These stories span the 19th and 20th centuries, transitioning smoothly from one tale to another to offer an intricate interpretation of the identity of these places. The second section, “The Book of the People Without a Book”, follows parallel narratives of the lives of the patients in a psychiatric hospital in Bethlehem, the mad men and women roaming the streets of the city, and those imprisoned by the Israeli authorities. All suffer abuse, but they also reaffirm their humanity through the relationships, romantic and otherwise, that they form. The third and final section, “An Ephemeral Book,” follows individuals—Palestinian and non-Palestinian—who are afflicted by madness following the Oslo Accords in 1993. These stories give voice to the perspectives of the long-marginalized Palestinian population, narrating the loss of land and the accompanying loss of sanity in the decades of despair and violence that followed the Nakba, the 1948 eviction of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. The novel’s mad characters—politicians, presidents, doctors, intellectuals, ordinary people and, yes, Dheisheh and Bethlehem themselves—burst out of their narrative threads, flowing from one story into the next. Alaysa’s crisp, lucid prose and deft storytelling chart a clear path through the chaos with dark humor and wit. The result is an important contribution to fiction on the Palestinian crisis that approaches the Palestinians, madness, and Palestinian spaces with compassion and depth.
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Children's & YAJanuary 2011The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air
by Abdo Wazen
In his first YA novel, cultural journalist and author Abdo Wazen writes about a blind teenager in Lebanon who finds strength and friendship among an unlikely group. Growing up in a small Lebanese village, Bassim’s blindness limits his engagement with the materials taught in his schools. Despite his family’s love and support, his opportunities seem limited. So at thirteen years old, Bassim leaves his village to join the Institute for the Blind in a Beirut suburb. There, he comes alive. He learns Braille and discovers talents he didn’t know he had. Bassim is empowered by his newfound abilities to read and write. Thanks to his newly developed self-confidence, Bassim decides to take a risk and submit a short story to a competition sponsored by the Ministry of Education. After winning the competition, he is hired to work at the Institute for the Blind. At the Institute, Bassim, a Sunni Muslim, forms a strong friendship with George, a Christian. Cooperation and collective support are central to the success of each student at the Institute, a principle that overcomes religious differences. In the book, the Institute comes to symbolize the positive changes that tolerance can bring to the country and society at large. The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is also a book about Lebanon and its treatment of people with disabilities. It offers insight into the vital role of strong family support in individual success, the internal functioning of institutions like the Institute, as well as the unique religious and cultural environment of Beirut. Wazen’s lucid language and the linear structure he employs result in a coherent and easy-to-read narrative. The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air is an important contribution to a literature in which people with disabilities are underrepresented. In addition to offering a story of empowerment and friendship, this book also aims to educate readers about people with disabilities and shed light on the indispensable roles played by institutions like the Institute.
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Children's & YAJanuary 2015Hatless
by Lateefa Buti / Illustrated by Doha Al Khteeb
Kuwaiti children’s book author Lateefa Buti’s well-crafted and beautifully illustrated children’s book, Hatless, encourages children (ages 6-9) to think independently and challenge rigid traditions and fixed rituals with innovation and creativity. The main character is a young girl named Hatless who lives in the City of Hats. Here, all of the people are born with hats that cover their heads and faces. The world inside of their hats is dark, silent, and odorless. Hatless feels trapped underneath her own hat. She wants to take off her hat, but she is afraid, until she realizes that whatever frightening things exist in the world around her are there whether or not she takes off her hat to see them. So Hatless removes her hat. As Hatless takes in the beauty of her surroundings, she cannot help but talk about what she sees, hears, and smells. The other inhabitants of the city ostracize her because she has become different from them. It is not long before they ask her to leave the City of Hats. Rather than giving up or getting angry, Hatless feels sad for her friends and neighbors who are afraid to experience the world outside of their hats. She comes up with an ingenious solution: if given another chance, she will wear a hat as long it is one she makes herself. The people of the City of Hats agree, so Hatless weaves a hat that covers her head and face but does not prevent her from seeing the outside world. She offers to loan the hat to the other inhabitants of the city. One by one, they try it on and are enchanted by the beautiful world around them. Since then, no child has been born wearing a hat. The people celebrate by tossing their old hats in the air. By bravely embracing these values, Hatless improves her own life and the lives of her fellow citizens. Buti’s language is eloquent and clear. She strikes a skilled narrative balance between revealing Hatless’s inner thoughts and letting the story unfold through her interactions with other characters. Careful descriptions are accompanied by beautiful illustrations that reward multiple readings of the book.
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In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat
by Iman Mersal
‘In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat’ is a book that traces the life of an unknown Egyptian writer who died in 1963, four years before the release of her only novel. The book does not follow a traditional style to present the biography of Al-Zayyat, or to restore consideration for a writer who was denied her rights. Mersal refuses to present a single story as if it is the truth and refuses to speak on behalf of the heroine or deal with her as a victim, but rather takes us on a journey to search for the individuality that is often marginalised in Arab societies. The book searches for a young woman whose family burned all her personal documents, including the draft of her second novel, and was completely absent in the collective archives. The narration derives its uniqueness from its ability to combine different literary genres such as fictional narration, academic research, investigation, readings, interviews, fiction, and fragments of the autobiography of the author of the novel. The book deals with the differences between the individuality of Enayat, who was born into an aristocratic family, graduated from a German school and wrote her narration during the domination of the speeches of the Nasserism period, and that of Mersal, a middle-class woman who formed her consciousness in the 1990s and achieved some of what Enayat dreamed of achieving but remained haunted by her tragedy. The book deals with important political, social and cultural issues, as we read the history of psychiatry in modern Egypt through the pills that Enayat swallowed to end her life on 3 January 1963, while her divorce summarises the continuing suffering of women with the Personal Status Law. We also see how the disappearance of a small square from her neighbourhood reveals the relationship between modernity and bureaucracy, and how the geography of Cairo changes, obliterated as the result of changes in political regimes. In the library of the German Archaeological Institute, where Enayat worked, we find an unwritten history of World War II and, in her unpublished second novel, we see unknown stories of German scientists fleeing Nazism to Cairo. We also see how Enayat’s neglected tomb reveals the life story of her great-grandfather, Ahmed Rashid Pasha, and the disasters buried in the genealogy tree.
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Picture booksThe Lilac Girl
by Ibtisam Barakat (author), Sinan Hallak (illustrator)
Inspired by the life story of Palestinian artist, Tamam Al-Akhal, The Lilac Girl is the sixth book for younger readers by award-winning author, Ibtisam Barakat. The Lilac Girl is a beautifully illustrated short story relating the departure of Palestinian artist and educator, Tamam Al-Akhal, from her homeland, Jaffa. It portrays Tamam as a young girl who dreams about returning to her home, which she has been away from for 70 years, since the Palestinian exodus. Tamam discovers that she is talented in drawing, so she uses her imagination to draw her house in her mind. She decides one night to visit it, only to find another girl there, who won’t allow her inside and shuts the door in her face. Engulfed in sadness, Tamam sits outside and starts drawing her house on a piece of paper. As she does so, she notices that the colors of her house have escaped and followed her; the girl attempts to return the colors but in vain. Soon the house becomes pale and dull, like the nondescript hues of bare trees in the winter. Upon Tamam’s departure, she leaves the entire place drenched in the color of lilac. As a children’s story, The Lilac Girl works on multiple levels, educating with its heart-rending narrative but without preaching, accurately expressing the way Palestinians must have felt by not being allowed to return to their homeland. As the story’s central character, Tamam succeeds on certain levels in defeating the occupying forces and intruders through her yearning, which is made manifest through the power of imaginary artistic expression. In her mind she draws and paints a picture of hope, with colors escaping the physical realm of her former family abode, showing that they belong, not to the invaders, but the rightful occupiers of that dwelling. Far from being the only person to have lost their home and endured tremendous suffering, Tamam’s plight is representative of millions of people both then and now, emphasizing the notion that memories of our homeland live with us for eternity, no matter how far we are from them in a physical sense. The yearning to return home never subsides, never lessens with the passing of time but, with artistic expression, it is possible to find freedom and create beauty out of pain.
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Fiction2022The End of the Desert
by Said Khatibi
On a nice fall day of 1988, Zakiya Zaghwani was found lying dead at the edge of the desert, giving way to a quest to discover the circumstances surrounding her death. While looking for whoever was involved in the death of the young singer, nearby residents discover bit by bit their involvement in many things other than the crime itself. ///The story takes place in a town near the desert. And as with Khatibi’s previous novels, this one is also marked by a tight plot, revolving around the murder of a singer who works in a hotel. This sets off a series of complex investigations that defy easy conclusions and invite doubt about the involvement of more than one character. /// Through the narrators of the novel, who also happen to be its protagonists, the author delves into the history of colonialism and the Algerian War of Independence and its successors, describing the circumstances of the story whose events unfold throughout the month. As such, the characters suspected of killing the singer are not only accused of a criminal offense, but are also concerned, as it appears, with the great legacy that the War of Independence left, from different aspects.///The novel looks back at a critical period in the modern history of Algeria that witnessed the largest socio-political crisis following its independence in 1988. While the story avoids the immediate circumstances of the war, it rather invokes the events leading up to it and tracks its impact on the social life, while capturing the daily life of vulnerable and marginalized groups. /// Nonetheless, those residents’ vulnerability does not necessarily mean they are innocent. As it appears, they are all involved in a crime that is laden with symbolism and hints at the status of women in a society shackled by a heavy legacy of a violent, wounded masculinity. This approach to addressing social issues reflects a longing to break loose from the stereotypical discourse that sets heroism in a pre-defined mold and reduces the truth to only one of its dimensions.
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May 2001Spectaculum 72
Vier moderne Theaterstücke
by Jon Fosse, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Else Lasker-Schüler, Dea Loher, Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel
Jon Fosse: Der NameDer Vater redet am liebsten gar nicht, die Mutter spricht vorzugsweise von sich, also über ihre Krankheit, die hochschwangere Tochter besucht nach langer Zeit die Eltern und möchte sich gerne aussprechen, hat sich aber mit ihrem Freund einen großen Schweiger ausgesucht - bleibt ihr Jugendfreund Barne. Mit ihm scheint die Familie zum Leben zu erwachen.Else Lasker-Schüler: Arthur Aronymus und seine VäterDas Stück spielt um 1840 in Westfalen und zeigt, wie eine jüdische Familie, der Gutsbesitzer Moritz Schüler mit seinen dreiundzwanzig Kindern, mit der wachsenden Pogromstimmung in der christlichen Umgebung konfrontiert wird.Dea Loher: Klaras Verhältnisse Klara sucht eine echte Lebensaufgabe, einen Platz im Leben. Bei ihrer Reise durch die bundesrepublikanische Wirklichkeit begegnen ihr die unterschiedlichsten Begierden und Sehnsüchte - eine tragikomische Gratwanderung zwischen hochfliegenden Wünschen und banalen Abgründen.Roland Schimmelpfennig: Die arabische NachtSiebter Stock, Wohnung 32: Wie von einer unbestimmten Sehnsucht getrieben, treffen sich hier in dieser »arabischen Nacht« Franziska, Fatima, ihr Freund Kalil, der Hausmeister Lomeier und Karpati, der Voyeur.
