Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Wilfrid Laurier University Press is a scholarly press based in Waterloo, Ontario.
View Rights PortalWilfrid Laurier University Press is a scholarly press based in Waterloo, Ontario.
View Rights PortalIn 2009, Hachette Livre (# 3 publishing group worldwide) and Librairie Antoine (one of the most renowned Lebanese bookseller groups) joined their strengths to set up Hachette Antoine, a joint-venture based in Beirut, Lebanon. The aim of the JV between Hachette Livre and Librairie Antoine was to create a leading trade publisher in the Arabic speaking world, covering the Middle East (Levant and GCC) and North-Africa regions, with a business focus on high potential markets. Our strength: • Large-scale distribution channels in the MENA region with warehouses in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt. • Strong PR and Media connections throughout the region with efficient online and offline marketing tools. • The only Arab publishing house to provide professional and exhaustive editing on both translated and original Arabic books. • Full financial transparency: All audit assertions and financial statements are served by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Our imprints Naufal: is dedicated to fiction and non-fiction. Our list includes well established classical and contemporary authors from the Arab world among which the best-selling/phenomenon Algerian author, Ahlem Mosteghanemi, Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa, and Lebanese journalist and women’s rights activist, Joumana Haddad. Fiction/translated: In translated fiction, our strategy consists of publishing authors from Arab origins who write in languages other than Arabic, alongside international best-selling authors. We also leave room for a few “coups de cœur” by debut authors. Thrillers and suspense: Include names such as J.K. Rowling aka Robert Galbraith, Mary Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, Anthony Horowitz and others, and providing quality translations. Non-Fiction: Biographies and Memoirs: Becoming, A promised land. HA Kids: Licenses: Hachette Antoine is the official licensee of Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Nickelodeon, Ferrari... in the MENA region, with more brands to come. History and Topical books, Illustrated, Inspirational stories, HA Lifestyle, HA Education, HA Reference
View Rights PortalOppen Porter, ein gutmütiger Riese, ein Kindskopf, stirbt. Glaubt er jedenfalls. 27 Jahre lang war sein Leben ereignislos, dann ging alles ganz schnell. Er hat seinen Vater begraben, er hat zum ersten Mal seinen kalifornischen Geburtsort verlassen und ist in die Stadt gezogen, er hat in einem Fastfood-Restaurant gearbeitet und einem Freund beigestanden, er hat sein Glück gesucht und gefunden. Und jetzt liegt er, davon ist er überzeugt, auf dem Totenbett. Doch bevor er abtritt, will er seinem ungeborenen Sohn hinterlassen, was er auf seinem abenteuerlichen Ausflug gelernt hat. Also schaltet er das Tonband an und erzählt: von seinen Begegnungen mit Menschen, die alle glauben, ihr Weg sei der beste für ihn. Von Carmen, die ihn so nimmt, wie er ist. Und von seiner Entschlossenheit, ein Mann von Welt zu werden. Antoine Wilson hat mit Oppen Porter eine Figur geschaffen, die uns die Welt mit anderen Augen sehen lässt – einen heiligen Einfaltspinsel, der jede Aufgabe, die ihm sein neues Leben stellt, mit kindlicher Neugier und entwaffnender Ehrlichkeit besteht. »Ein Mann von Welt« ist ein Buch voller Wärme und Humor, das uns etwas Wichtiges lehrt: den Wert von Eigensinn.
1941 schreibt Antoine de Saint-Exupéry seinem Jugendfreund Léon Werth einen fiktiven literarischen Brief, der 1955 in Deutschland unter dem Titel „Bekenntnis einer Freundschaft“ veröffentlicht wird. Saint-Exupéry erzählt Werth, der sich vor den Nazis verstecken muss, von seiner Odyssee als Flüchtling und seinen Erlebnissen in der Wüste. Sein Aufruf, sich wieder auf das „Wesentliche“ zu besinnen, ist ein literarisches Dokument der Freundschaft und Humanität. Dem Freund widmet Saint-Exupéry auch den „Kleinen Prinzen“: „Für Léon Werth, als er noch ein kleiner Junge war“.
Oppen Porter, ein gutmütiger Riese, ein Kindskopf, stirbt. Glaubt er jedenfalls. 27 Jahre lang war sein Leben ereignislos, dann ging alles ganz schnell. Er hat seinen Vater begraben, er hat zum ersten Mal seinen kalifornischen Geburtsort verlassen und ist in die Stadt gezogen, er hat in einem Fastfood-Restaurant gearbeitet und einem Freund beigestanden, er hat sein Glück gesucht und gefunden. Und jetzt liegt er, davon ist er überzeugt, auf dem Totenbett. Doch bevor er abtritt, will er seinem ungeborenen Sohn hinterlassen, was er auf seinem abenteuerlichen Ausflug gelernt hat. Also schaltet er das Tonband an und erzählt: von seinen Begegnungen mit Menschen, die alle glauben, ihr Weg sei der beste für ihn. Von Carmen, die ihn so nimmt, wie er ist. Und von seiner Entschlossenheit, ein Mann von Welt zu werden. Antoine Wilson hat mit Oppen Porter eine Figur geschaffen, die uns die Welt mit anderen Augen sehen lässt – einen heiligen Einfaltspinsel, der jede Aufgabe, die ihm sein neues Leben stellt, mit kindlicher Neugier und entwaffnender Ehrlichkeit besteht. »Ein Mann von Welt« ist ein Buch voller Wärme und Humor, das uns etwas Wichtiges lehrt: den Wert von Eigensinn.
In Condorcets großartigem »Entwurf«, der als das philosophische Resümee des achtszehnten Jahrhunderts gilt, erreicht das in der Aufklärung eintwickelte Bewußtsein von Geschichte einen Höhepunkt. Condorcet hat die Strukturen der Moderne erkannt und Einsichten und Hoffnungen formuliert, die heute wieder in Vergessenheit zu geraten drohen. Seine Überlegungen sind nicht – wie die herrschende Geschichtsschreibung bis heute – der Partei der Mächtigen verpflichtet, sondern der regulativen Idee der Humanität.
A sweeping historical saga about a city that defies the eroding power of time In one of the first Arabic novels about the COVID-19 pandemic, relationships begin and end much like the pandemic itself. From his balcony in Beirut, Ezzat notices a solitary light on a lone balcony in the building opposite. From that moment, a connection begins to form across the empty space between the buildings, communicated through the air and signals. The events unfold after the owner of the shadow steps out onto her balcony, confronting the voyeur. They share time, confusion... and desire. Ezzat and Tamer successively both fall in love with the same woman, and a cautious friendship develops between the two men. It soon evolves into more dangerous forms. The story also portrays the experiences of other building residents during the pandemic, who imposed strict isolation on themselves. The protagonists, particularly the two elderly lovers, live on the edge of catastrophic expectations, as when they imagine that a woman pressing the intercom downstairs to ask for food could be a sign of an impending widespread famine. The story does not conclude in a stalemate but rather with losers.
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.
Remorse Test is Sweileh’s follow up to his novel Writing Love, which was the 2009 winner of The Mahfouz Medal for Literature. This semi-autobiographical novel, takes readers through the streets of Damascus and offers a first-hand look at life and loss during the Syrian civil war. The protagonist is a brilliant writer who is navigating a new, war-torn reality. While reminiscing about his past, he shows us what everyday life is like in Damascus—at once brutal and boring—and laments the missed opportunities and destruction the conflict has caused in his country. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, poet and novelist, author Khalil Sweileh writes about the psychological conflicts amid the shattered reality of place and society using language that is full of imagery. Remorse Test is an important addition to Syrian literature, both for its subject matter and unique use of narrative tools and vocabulary. (An extended English-language report on this book will be available soon.)
A memory drags another. An idea drags another. A moment drags another in a self-exploratory journey of a girl who is lost between her four addresses: between a mother imprisoned by her children and a father still stuck in a prison even after he was released. Between a lover who gave her all her hopes, only to come back and steal them from her, and friends who provided refuge that she rejected. Confused between divorce and the cause, between mother and father, between friendship, love and independence, trying to answer a simple question: Why can’t I bear the taste of milk?
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.
In “When The Giraffe Still Had Admirers” we get to know Claude Bernard and Louis Pasteur, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Lichtwarck-Aschoff takes their lives and discoveries – often resulting from serendipity – as the starting point for his stories. The enthralling read makes literature so eloquent, full of wit and powerful that this author is no longer just an insider tip.
Paul Nizan (1905-1940) schrieb für die Zeitung L’Humanité. Bis kurz vor seinem Tod war er Mitglied der KPD und ein enger Freund Jean-Paul Sartres.