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Fiction2022Where to, O Poem
by Ali Jaafar Al Allaq
This autobiographical work centers on literary creativity. Poet Ali Jaafar Alallaq recollects his academic and professional experiences, as well as their diverse ventures into poetic, literary, critical, and academic writing earlier in his life. The book covers the poet’s upbringing in a humble, impoverished village, his family’s subsequent move to Baghdad in the early 1950s, and his journey up until the present day. ///The biography details a plethora of human, cultural, and poetic events that impacted Alallaq’s perspective on events he witnessed, interacted with, or was involved in. These events range in intensity and scope, spanning from his childhood years in the countryside to navigating significant societal changes in Baghdad, and from his early explorations in writing and literary journalism to pursuing doctoral studies in the United Kingdom. He reflects on enduring two destructive wars that displaced Iraq’s people, leading to a life of exile and reliance on divine providence under the night sky. ///Beginning in 1991, Alallaq began a long period abroad that included six years of teaching at Sanaa University, followed by ten years of work at the United Arab Emirates University from 1997 to 2015. He produced a remarkable body of poetry and critical works during his tenure as a university instructor and his active involvement in cultural and poetic affairs in Sanaa and later in the UAE, which continues to this day. ///In this book, Alallaq takes on several roles, including narrator, contemplator, restorer, and descriptor, and expresses himself using elevated literary language. As a result, the work serves as an aesthetic testament to the purity of language as well as a cohesive account of the ups and downs of daily life. Despite living and working in a prosperous and stable environment for many years, he remains emotionally and imaginatively connected to the events and struggles affecting his country and the Arab world. He continues to document his aesthetic and patriotic testimony of current happenings, as clearly evidenced in his present autobiography.
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Plant physiologyMay 2008Plant Membrane and Vacuolar Transporters
by Tracey A. Cuin, Jay Morris, Toshio Sana, Tzvetina Brumbarova, Jon K. Pittman, Yongchao Liang, Bibin Paulose, Katsuhiro Shiratake, Uwe Ludewig, Nobukazu Shitan, Tetsuro Mimura, Savita Dahiya. Edited by Pawan K. Jaiwal, Rana P. Singh, Om Parkash Dhankher.
While information on the roles and regulation of transporters for all major nutrients and metabolites in plants has increased significantly, a synthesis of this research has been lacking. Based on current research in genomics and proteomics, this book clarifies the identification and characterization of plant membrane and vacuolar transporters. Transporter functions such as mineral nutrition, cell homeostasis, storage and stress responses are examined with a focus on enhancing nutrient use efficiency in crops, and increasing crops’ ability to withstand nutrient stresses and improve nutrient storage.
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Children's & YANigu the Friendly Dragon
by Watiek Ideo
On the top of the mountain, live a dragon that often spout fire. Everyone in the village is afraid of the lone dragon. Three friends are curious about it and want to take a peek if the dragon is truly as scary as people said. When they arrive there, what they see is definitely not something they expected!
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Children's & YADrawing on the Walls
by Wikan Satriati
Tiwo always follows what her sister Tiwi does. One day, Tiwi is drawing, and Tiwo wants to do it, too. Tiwo looks at the wall in his house. It's white and spacious. He starts to make scribbles all over the wall. When mama finds out, she gets angry. What will Tiwo do?
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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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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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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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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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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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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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March 2024Born Hutsi
by Fiston Mudacumura
The author was raised in a family of only survivors from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis. Even FARG (A survivors fund) allegedly paid for his school fees for some time. Through FARG reform, he learned that his father had associated with perpetrators even if he was also killed in 1994. Digesting that information as a teenager was not easy. In this book, you read about his other close-to-normal upbringing like infatuation, sex advice from fellow teenagers, getting conned in Paris and arrested on his first trip to France, his take from the "Ndi umunyarwanda" campaign, #PK saving him from getting expelled at the university, joining a political party at the university,...
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Health & Personal DevelopmentPause and Sense
by Emily Atallah
Thousands of people say things such as “I have no time”, “when did life pass me by”, or “I have nothing left to live for.” According to the WHO, nearly 700,000 people commit suicide every year, and conditions such as depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and lack of purpose are increasingly rooted in our societies, blocking our view to a life full of light and possibilities. In the age of instant connectivity, we have never been as disconnected, unmotivated and empty as we are now. In these pages, you will find 10 practical tools that will help you get unstuck, find your way through pain, and reconnect with your purpose towards a plentiful life. The book is divided in three sections that help you understand what is valuable about life, what we can give to the world as human beings, and how we can embrace challenges, increase connectivity with each other and increase our awareness. This book invites you to enrich your own life, through reflections that help you go deep inside, and examples of how others who when through similar experiences, got through them to live a happier, meaningful, and purposeful life.
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Health & Personal DevelopmentAnd Then There Was Light
by Blanca Rosa Gutiérrez
Faced unexpectedly with Lyme Disease, Spanish Architect Blanca Rosa Gutiérrez must face illness and abandonment, while at the same time trying to take care of her two small children. She struggles to find help and treatment from doctors, until the combination of finding the right physician, and an iron will to overcome adversity through meditation and non traditional healing, puts her back on the road to full health. As the author says in her own words: "I wrote this book with a single purpose in mind: make it into a song of hope for anybody who is ill and feels defeated by pain, and have lost the will to live." This book is not about illness, is about recovery and new beginnings
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May 2020Een wolf bij zijn oren pakken
by Sana Valiulina
When the elderly Emperor Tiberius – who now governs the Roman Empire by letter after withdrawing to the island of Capri – peers at the signal station from his standpoint on the cliff, he is consumed by fear. Will his plan to eliminate the power-hungry Sejanus succeed, or will he himself be killed if he fails to flee to Syria in time? Sejanus has ruled in Rome for many years and is confident of the support of the Praetorian Guard. How did it come to this? How could the emperor who trusted no one put his destiny in the hands of this over-promoted provincial knight? Who is this Sejanus and how are these events related to the mysterious banquet that took place fifty years ago? Grabbing a Wolf by the Ears is an unsettling saga about the most powerful families of imperial Rome, told from the perspective of the ‘saddest of men’, Emperor Tiberius, and about the extent to which people can shape their life and destiny.
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July 2020My Father’s City
by Kafa Al Zoghbi
It is the city where Nabil came to bury his father. It is the city that his father abandoned after he failed it, and he kept longing for it. In it Nabil met Sana, and went with her on a path whose horizon in the distance seems narrow, but it expands as they progress. And there he met the ghost of a man who could have been his father: This man did not fail the city, did not desert it, and held fast in its prisons; a tormented ghost wanders in a dark city shackled by the constancy of time, reason and language. Kafa Al Zoghbi: A Jordanian novelist who has published several novels.
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October 2019Cyberparents 2.0 network security for the family
by Luis Miguel Ángel Cepeda
Esta obra hace una invitación a los padres de familia a reconocer los peligros virtuales -sexting, grooming, pornografía infantil, robo de información, entre otros- ya saber cómo prevenirlos, partiendo de los más importante que es el fortalecimiento de los valores y las responsabilidades en el hogar, pero también es una guía práctica para aprender, a través de ejemplos sencillos, algunas técnicas y habilidades sobre como proteger a los menores, como garantizarles una sana y segura convivencia en la red.
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FictionOctober 2020EVERNA Rajni Sari
Wicked
by Andry Chang
Rajni Sari, princess of Rainusa is forced to flee from the palace to catch up with her mother, Lastika. Together with Jaka, a market thug appointed as the palace guard, Sari goes through various adventures and faces powerful adversaries. The love between Sari and Jaka grows, but her destiny as Lastika's daughter, who turns out to be Calon Arang, separates herself and Jaka. Sari prefers her mother. Unable to reject the legacy of strength from her mother, Sari relents and accepts her mother's orders to become her successor, the ruler of dark powers. Sari is on the crossroads: following her mother's orders or following her heart's wishes. Sari's choice then triggers a new fight between Light and Darkness, namely Barong and Calon Arang, which will simultaneously determine Rainusa's future. Favorite Winner in the 2019 Comico x Elex E-Novel Challenge Contest.
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Children's & YA2019Animal Love
A Crazy Flirt
by Ángeles Quinteros, Ángeles Vargas
We hug, kiss and cuddle when we are in love. We want to always be close to that special person and even surprise them with gifts. All these actions also take part in the animal kingdom, but not only that! Animals also present a range of endless strange behaviors that will leave you speechless: chases, choreographies and tricks are only some of the things animals do to flirt their mating partners in order to stay together. A book with a sense of humour, but with a scientific and theoretical basis, full of unusual and amusing facts that aim to arouse your curiosity through simple texts, but incorporating the terms used in this specific field, what will broaden the reader's lexicon.
