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Children's & YALes chimpanzés de Bossou (The chimpanzees of Bossou)
by Moussa Kourouma
The chimpanzee is a very intelligent animal that knows how to use tools: stones to crush palm kernels, sticks to pick fruit, leaves to drink water, stems to search termite mounds or catch grasshoppers. When he falls ill he knows how to use certain plants to heal himself.
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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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
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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Trusted Partner
Pest controlJune 2015Biocontrol Agents of Phytonematodes
by Mahfouz Abd-Elgawad, Christian Cumagun, M K Dasgupta, Pedro Luiz Martins Soares, K Devrajan, Masanori Koike, Ioannis Giannakou, E A Tzortzakakis, Fernando da Silva Rocha, Fábio Alves, Ioannis Vagelas, Moussa Lobna, Uri Gerson, A H Wani, C Sankaranarayanan, Anwar L Bilgrami, Mohammad Reza Moosavi, Kamal Kishore Chaudhary.
Highlighting the use of biocontrol agents as an alternative to chemical pesticides in the management of plant parasitic nematodes, this book reviews the current progress and developments in the field. Tactful and successful exploitation of each biocontrol agent, i.e. nematophagous fungi, parasitic bacteria, predaceous mites, rhizobacteria, mycorrhiza and predaceous nematodes, has been described separately. The contributors are 23 eminent nematologists and their information has been compiled in 19 chapters.
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Trusted Partner
September 2024Potential Pulses
Genetic and Genomic Resources
by Rahul Chandora, T Basavaraja, Aditya Pratap, Daniel B. Adewale, Michael Abberton, Gopal Katna, Parul Sharma, Kanishka Chandora, Martial Nounagnon, Gautier Roko, Nadège Adoukè Agbodjato, Durand Dah-Nouvlessounon, Olubukola Oluranti Babalola, Lamine Baba-Moussa, Mithlesh Kumar, Kirti Rani, Shailesh Kumar Jain, Moti Lal Mehriya, Gayacharan, Swarup K. Parida, Amit Kumar Singh, Debashish Chattopadhyay, D. C. Joshi, P.S. Basavaraj, Ramya Rathod, Krishna Kumar Jangid, K.M. Boraiah, C.B. Harisha, H.M. Halli, Kuldeep Tripathi, K. Sammi Reddy, Carine Nono Temegne, Isabel Milagros Gavilan Figari, Esaïe Tsoata, Paul Agendia, Francis Ajebesone Ngome, Anupam Tripathi, S. Gurumurthy, C. Mahadevaiah, Devindrappa
The fight against global hunger demands a fresh perspective. Lesser-known legumes, often called 'potential pulses', can play a pivotal role. These underutilized powerhouses, including adzuki bean, bambara groundnut, faba bean, cowpea, grass pea and horse gram, among others, are currently untapped resources. Their potential goes beyond their ability to thrive in harsh environments (caused by high temperature, drought, etc.) and fix nitrogen. With increased understanding of these legumes and their genetic and genomic potential, we can unlock a new world of sustainable and nutritious food sources. This book explores: The rich genetic diversity of potential pulses and its role in resilience. How advanced genomics can identify traits for improved yields, pest resistance, and climate adaptation. Strategies for conserving and utilizing these valuable genetic resources. Breeding programmes harnessing genetic potential to create next-generation pulse varieties. Focusing on the untapped genetic and genomic potential of these legumes, this book empowers researchers, breeders, and policymakers to unlock a new era of food and nutritional security. By leveraging the power of their genes, we can transform underutilized pulses into the nutritional heroes of tomorrow.
