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      • Biography & True Stories
        February 2019

        A Global Citizen at Home in Saxony

        Mit Sebastian Christ

        by Hussein Jinah

        An East German, migrant view of Saxony before and after 1989. A committed life, led with unwavering humanity. And an autobiography of an activist life in times of xenophobia and racism. The fascinating story of Hussein Jinah from Gujarat / India who was born on a British steamer, grew up in Tanzania and South Africa and came to the GDR as a guest student in the 1980s to study. He tells how relationships between "foreigners" and native women were badly regarded. Why he changed from electrical engineering to social pedagogy after 1989 despite completing his doctorate. How he has since worked as a street worker with young people and also mediated between neo-Nazis and kebab shop owners. How he was beaten up by skins and became the first anti-Pegida demonstrator. How, in his opinion, prejudices against Muslims and in general against being different hardened after 9/11. Why he still stays in Dresden, lives and works and can still say calmly and convincingly: "I never give up."

      • Fiction
        September 2023 - September 2028

        The universe of U feeeling experience

        by José Ángel Mañas

        Tense futuristic stories, yet hauntingly realistic, with an edge of psychological unease reminiscent of Allan Poe   The author of “Stories from the Kronen” José Ángel Mañas returns with a disturbing and iconoclastic new adventure called The U Feeling Experience with the creation of a body-swapping experience that aims to achieve universal empathy.   A world entertainment company born in Silicon Valley arrives in the capital convinced that with its technology they can bring irreconcilable enemies closer together: goodbye to the gender war, goodbye to the class war, goodbye to xenophobia. With U feeling, psychological therapies will be achieved with results never seen before.   An intriguing series in which each book tells a different story with new protagonists, although it has a fixed universe, the environment that is always maintained and that unifies the series is the "Exchange Department", an office of the National Police that oversees resolving the cases derived from the problems of exchange of bodies.   Based on dystopias that shows a conflict at the beginning, the reader begins to resolve the conflict in his head, but nevertheless behind each story there is a complex framework, a different solution to what appears to be at first, an inevitable tension seizes you and you're dying to know what's going on. In the end everything becomes clear, but the suspense and intrigue have stayed inside you. So far, Alt autores publishing house has published three books:     Book 1. The story of Momar   What happens when a desperate immigrant and a wealthy man from the capital decide to swap bodies?   Book 2. Gabri the glutton   Is it legal for a child and a parent to swap bodies? The moral and legal dilemmas caused by this new fashion of body swapping have only just begun. Book 3. The price of meat It tells the story of Julius, a big and robust man, an insatiable carnivore, and his wife Ayra, the love of his life, a militant vegetarian who asks him to give up meat.

      • Mats and Milad

        or: News from the Middle of Nowhere

        by Eva Rottmann

        About young love and old hate   Mathilda’s first meeting with Milad is rather shocking: She has to tear him off the rails at the last moment before a train arrives! But it turns out, that he did not want to kill himself, he just wanted to get a kick and feel he is alive.   Mats, as Mathilda calls herself, and Milad like each other almost from the first moment they’ve met. She, the outsider in her school, he who works in the garage of his dad, who originally is from Lebanon. They could be a pair. Could – if it weren't for the beautiful Alex, who didn't miss the fact that Milad looks pretty good on the one hand. And – on the other hand – for David, who has fallen in love with Mats, but also hangs out with the Nazi gang of the town.   This gang really becomes active when it turns out that the asylum seekers' home in the neighbouringcity is asbestos contaminated and the refugees have to be relocated to the sport hall of their village. More and more the citizens become concerned because of the “hordes of foreigners” who might come to town. And when the sport hall goes up in flames, everything gets out of control ...

      • Football (Soccer, Association football)
        August 2013

        Grobar

        Partizan Pleasure, Pain and Paranoia: Lifting the Lid on Serbia's Undertakers

        by James Moor

        An Arsenal fan is forced to ditch his first love and switch allegiances to a new team. Handed a Foreign Office posting to Belgrade, James Moor gives up his season ticket and looks for a new Serbian team to support. Being a veteran of the Congo and Helmand Province war zones stands him in good stead for what follows. Having chosen Partizan over Red Star, James enters a scene awash with nationalism, xenophobia and conspiracy theories. He lifts the lid on Serbian fan culture, Partizan's internal disputes, violence between the club's own Grobari (Undertakers) supporters as well as with their hated local rivals. Moor attends matches among crowds of 50,000 and 2000, and sees games interrupted by stadium fires at a club permanently at war with itself. And this is before former Chelsea boss Avram Grant takes over midway through a tumultuous season at home and in Europe.

      • Fiction
        May 2023

        Tears of the Weavear

        Short stories

        by Zaheera Jina Asvat

        In these superbly crafted stories, the author takes us into the private worlds of a rich variety of characters, revealing the complex weave of emotions often hidden behind the veneer of everyday lives. The stories take a fresh look at conventions and roles governed by religion and culture, providing earthy portraits of people struggling with ongoing oppressions, especially concerning gender, in post-apartheid South Africa. Bhajee’s concern is a stolen electricity meter, which cannot be replaced because a fictional Mr Ka Ching Ching is the registered owner; and Suhail Mangel, a victim of xenophobia, fears that his family has cursed him. Shaazia cannot conceive, and is offered the option of a surrogate in the form of a second wife. Then there is the woman in Covid-19 lockdown trying to fathom her broken marriage; a family fighting for inheritance in the face of religious law; and a cat who brings gifts to her depressed owner.

      • Children's & YA
        October 2020

        Maurice and His Dictionary

        A True Story

        by Cary Fagan, Enzo Lord Mariano

        This is the story of one refugee family’s harrowing journey, based on author Cary Fagan’s own family history. The graphic novel follows a young Jewish boy, Maurice, and his family as they flee their home in Belgium during the Second World War. They travel by train to Paris, through Spain to Portugal, and finally across the ocean to Jamaica, where they settle in an internment camp. All the while, Maurice is intent on continuing his education and growing up to be a lawyer. He overcomes obstacles to find a professor to study with, works toward a high school diploma while in the camp, and is ultimately accepted to university in Canada. His English dictionary becomes a beloved tool and beacon of hope through the danger and turmoil of the family’s migration. Moments of lightness and humor balance the darkness in this powerful story of one refugee family’s courage and resilience, and of the dictionary that came to represent their freedom.

      • Fiction

        The Psychedelic Traveller

        Short Stories

        by ANTHONY JAMES

        A collection of short stories from adventures and fantastic imaginings aroud the world.  Each story is set in a different country, from Brazil to Siberia, from new Zealand to India. Each story is a cameo in itself, each one of a different mood, be it playful, or dark, of conflict or good humour. Stories will remind those who travel widely of the pitfalls and opportunities and remind all the readers that there is nothing more wonderful than this wonderful world and the ppeople in it.

      • A History of Disappearance

        by Sarah Lubala

        Sarah Lubala’s debut collection of poetry, A History of Disappearance, centres on the experiences of those living on the margins, particularly girls and women. The opening poem, “6 Errant Thoughts on Being a Refugee,” for which Lubala was shortlisted for the prestigious Gerald Kraak Award, sets the tone for this important collection. The 56 poems span themes such as forced migration, gender-violence, xenophobia, race, mental illness, love, and belonging. The notion of disappearance runs like a thread through each of them, not only as an event, but, as Lubala describes it in an interview with OkayAfrica, also “as a structure of experience.” Lubala writes in taut, bare sentences, potent in their lyrical beauty. Every word is exact and necessary, none are superfluous. Many of her poems read like prayers, and indeed this is a word that returns again and again in the collection. In spite of the adversity her speakers face, they refuse to remain silent. Each of their voices shines through the language, loud with resistance. Her poems navigate the pain of displacement, loss, absence, and grief with empathy and care. Lublala has said of her work that she hopes to expand the “moral imagination” of her readers. She achieves just this, confronting the reader with the human face, obliging us to look and imagine beyond the margins of our own experience.

      • Education
        January 2012

        The Immigration & Education Nexus

        A Focus on the Context & Consequences of Schooling

        by Urias, D. A.

        The focus of this edited volume is on immigration’s effect on schooling and the consequential aspect of illegal immigration’s effect. To understand immigration (legal and undocumented) and K-16 education in Asia, Europe, and the US is to situate both within the broader context of globalization. This volume presents a timely and poignant analysis of the historical, legal, and demographic issues related to immigration with implications for education and its interdisciplinary processes. Arguments based on theories of globalization, socialization, naturalization, and xenophobia are provided as a conceptual foundation to assess such issues as access to and use of public services, e.g., public education, health, etc. Additional discussions center around the social, political, and economic forces that shape the social/cultural identities of this population as it tries to integrate into the larger society. The long-term causes and consequences of global immigration dynamics, and the multiple paths taken by immigrants, especially children, wishing to study are addressed. Summary discussion concludes the volume as well as projections with respect to links between immigration and key national security and international policy issues. Education can and must play an important role in a world that is more global and at the same time more local than it was almost twenty years ago. This volume intends to serve as an ambitious guide to approaching the issues of immigration and education more globally.

      • January 2012

        Maxwell's Crossing

        by M. J. Trow

        Peter Maxwell is torn between his usual mild xenophobia and his love of the movies when his head of department Paul Moss takes part in a cultural exchange with a family from LA - Hollywood, or as near as makes no difference. Their impact on Leighford is mixed, from Hector Gold, the teacher of the extended family group, being unexpectedly competent to Jeff O'Malley, his father-in-law, being rather good at cards, cheating and mild intimidation. Soon, members of the card-school are dying and with Nolan's scary headteacher Mrs Whatmough on his back, Maxwell is soon up to his elbows in trans-Atlantic phone calls and dodgy dealing in all senses of the word. Before they know it, the Maxwells are on their way to Hollywood - Metternich having been enticed into the cat basket for the journey of a lifetime - on an exchange of their own. Will either the Maxwell family - or America - ever be the same again? Booksmonthly: "The seventeenth Mad Max Maxwell book, and one of the very best I've ever read. Maxwell is on sparkling form in this hilarious romp with just a touch of danger...The magic lies in the dialogue and the relationships...Terrific fun, but when you think about it, it's finely crafted in a John Creasey kind of way, and a very fine detective fiction indeed...Unmissable."

      • Enseñando a sentir Repertorios éticos en la ficción infantil

        by Macarena García González

        This book explores the relationships between ethics and aesthetics in children's fiction, focusing on issues considered "difficult" or "controversial" based on current considerations of what would be appropriate for them. Macarena García González critically examines the premise that children's literature serves to learn from emotions by questioning adult epistemologies and the conservative apprehensions that underlie when books are used to teach how to feel. In eight chapters it explores different themes - empathy, violence, xenophobia, death, migration, gender and poverty, among others - in children's books, film animations and in the discourses and practices that appear from different institutions that shape the cultural consumption of children. The question that is woven throughout the volume is how certain emotional repertoires that are offered and favored in children's fiction are entwined with inequities and exclusions from contemporary society. Macarena García González (Santiago, 1980) is a journalist with a master's degree in cultural studies from the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, and a doctorate in social anthropology and cultural studies from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. From the Center for Advanced Studies in Educational Justice of the Pontifical Catholic University, he develops research that explores intersections between literature, the arts, epistemologies and education. She is the author of The Stories We Tell Children about Immigration and International Adoption (Routledge, 2017) and co-author, with Óscar Contardo, of La era ochentera. Tevé, pop and under in the Chile of the 80s (Ediciones B, 2005 / Planeta, 2015). She has been a visiting researcher at the Internationale Jugendbibliothek in Munich, Germany, and at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She works as a teacher and currently directs the Research Project Fondecyt Emotional and Literary Repertories for Children.

      • The Holocaust
        October 2017

        The Vél d'Hiv Raid

        The French Police at the Service of the Gestapo

        by Maurice Rajsfus; translated by Levi Laub; foreword by Michel Warschawski

        With passion and indignation, Maurice Rajsfus recounts the worst single crime of the Vichy regime in France: the pre-dawn arrest by French police, at German instigation, on July 16-17, 1942, of 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children, and their ordeal on the way to extermination. Rajsfus brings this terrible experience to life with contemporary texts – high-level Franco-German haggling, detailed police instructions, eye-witness testimony, and press commentary. – Robert O. Paxton, author of Vichy France and the Jews   This uniquely detailed study of the July 16, 1942 roundup offers the only contemporary analysis of both the precursors and the aftermath of the Vél d’Hiv Raid. Rajsfus details the internal organization of the police, showing the mechanisms of this raid particularly and of raids in general, making the book an indispensable micro-history of the Holocaust. Notably, as the author points out, the French police went beyond Nazi ordinances and took it upon themselves to arrest and imprison more than 13,000 Jews at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. This book flies in the face of right-wing politicians who today continue to deny the crime was a French one.

      • Society & culture: general
        April 2017

        The New Populism

        Democracy Stares into the Abyss

        by Marco Revelli

        A crisp and trenchant dissection of populism today. The word “populism” has come to cover all manner of sins. Yet despite the prevalence of its use, it is often difficult to understand what connects its various supposed expressions. From Syriza to Trump and from Podemos to Brexit, the electoral earthquakes of recent years have often been grouped under this term. But what actually defines “populism”? Is it an ideology, a form of organisation, or a mentality? Marco Revelli seeks to answer this question by getting to grips with the historical dynamics of so-called “populist” movements. While in the early days of democracy, populism sought to represent classes and social layers that asserted their political roles for the first time, in today’s post-democratic climate, it instead expresses the grievances of those who had until recently felt that they were included. Having lost their power, the disinherited embrace not a political alternative to –isms like liberalism or socialism, but a populist mood of discontent. The new populism is the “formless form” that protest and grievance assume in the era of financialisation, in the era where the atomised masses lack voice or organisation. For Revelli, this new populism is the child of an age in which the Left has been hollowed out and lost its capacity to offer an alternative. (From the Verso Books presentation)

      • Travel writing
        December 2004

        Pilgrims Road

        A Journey to Santiago De Compostela

        by Bettina Selby

        Since the Tenth Century pilgrims have travelled the ancient roads through France and Spain that lead to the fabled town of Santiago de Compostela, the legendary shrine of St James the apostle. Travelling in groups for safety they braved the marauding Moorish armies, raging torrents and fearsome mountain passes, trusting in the protection afforded them by the emblem of St. James, a scallop shell. A thousand years later, Bettina Selby tackled the pilgrim’s trail alone and on a bicycle, finding the scallop shell still a powerful talisman, opening doors and providing shelter. This is the story of her journey through countries whose twentieth-century veneer barely conceals a wealth of history, from the magnificent architecture of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages to the tiny hamlets that seem untouched by the present day, and the awe-inspiring and dangerous beauty of the Pyrenees. Like her predecessors, Bettina Selby had to deal with the natural hazards of the terrain, thieves and wild dogs, but she also encountered a host of fascinating characters along the route. Above all she found a vibrant tradition that lures more and more people to become pilgrims on the road to the ‘Field of the Star’ A real adventurer - brave, good humoured, modest and patient. She is also compassionate. TLS

      • Fiction
        February 2020

        The Church

        by Avgust Demšar

        The Church is a typical whodunnit crime novel. The crimes once again take place in native Slovenian surroundings, mostly in the fictitious village of Vodnjaki, where it seems that a special type of evil resides. The tenth, jubilee novel by Demšar is more extensive, the story is more complex and the side stories are even more surprising. The author lures us into a whirlwind of events and holds the reader in suspense even when he delves into the relationships between his mainstay characters known from his previous novels and their characterisation. The rising action that triggers further events is the murder of a high-level church dignitary. Even before the criminal investigators can get down to work, new murders and crimes are reported. In addition to the main storyline, Demšar touches on many different current social issues. This intensely suspenseful read full of intellectual challenges leads the reader on a path to solving an exceptionally complex case.

      • Praying to the West

        The Story of Muslims in the Americas, in Thirteen Mosques

        by Omar Mouallem

        Muslims have lived in the New World for over 500 years, before Protestantism even existed, but their contributions were erased by revisionists and ignorance. In this colorful alternative history o f the Americas, we meet the enslaved and indentured Muslims who changed the course of history, the immigrants who advanced the Space Race and automotive revolution, the visionaries who spearheaded civil rights movements, and the 21st-century Americans shifting the political landscape while struggling for acceptance both within and outside their mosques.   In search of these forgotten stories, Mouallem traveled 7,000 miles, from the northwest tip of Brazil to the southeast edge of the Arctic, to visit thirteen pivotal mosques. What he discovers is a population as diverse and conflicted as you’d find in any other house of worship, and deeply misunderstood. Parallel to the author’s geographical journey is a personal one. A child of immigrants, Mouallem discovers that, just as the greater legacy of Western Islam was lost on him, so were the stories of prior generations in his family. An atheist since the 9/11 attacks, Mouallem reconsiders Islam and his place within it.   Meanwhile, as the rise of hate groups threaten the liberties of Muslims in the West, ideologues from the East try to suppress their liberalism. With pressures to assimilate coming from all sides, will Muslims of the Americas ever be free to worship on their own terms?

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