On a December morning in 1907, two close friends, Hanna and Zakariya, return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children—nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Their lives will never be the same.Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. Bu...

WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times)Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ru...

Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly a...

WINNER OF THE NAQUIB MAHFOUZ MEDAL FOR LITERATURESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONONE OF THE 50 MOST IMPORTANT ARABIC NOVELS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (THE NATIONAL)In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, one family descends into ruin in this novel from "one of the rising stars of Arab fiction" (New York Times)Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ru...

The night before Eid, three teenage boys hatch a plan to ‘borrow’ money so they can attend a fancy picnic, only to discover the money is cursed...After being injured in a bombing, a talented composer can no longer tell if his previous, ground-breaking compositions ever existed...Following the security services’ purge of his department, a government employee decides his only option is to kill his boss...After fourteen years of relentless ci...

This book is essential for understanding the Nile Delta, recognized as one of the world's most vulnerable deltas due to population growth and the impacts of sea level rise (SLR). Spanning approximately 38,000 square kilometers, the Nile Delta is the largest delta globally, warranting an in-depth exploration of its geology, hydrocarbon potential, and water resources.This comprehensive volume provides detailed geological insights into both the Recent Nile Delta and the ancient deposi...

When Jean Sasson’s book Princess: Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia was published, it became an immediate international bestseller. It sold to 43 countries and spent 13 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Now, in this long-awaited, compelling new book, Sasson and the Princess ‘Sultana’ return to tell the world what it means to be a Saudi woman today.Through advances in education and with access to work, Saudi women are breaking through the barriers; th...

Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law provides a penetrating, unusually intimate look into Saudi society and the bin Laden family's role within it, as well as the treatment of Saudi women.On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her ...

August Book Sense PickA fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed 'scientist of women.' A purring, voluptuous siren. A young shop-girl enduring the clammy touch of her boss and hating herself for accepting the modest banknotes he tucks into her pocket afterward. An earnest, devout young doorman, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism. A cynical, secretly gay newspaper editor, helplessly in love with a peasant security guard. A roof-squatting tailor, schemi...

In the vein of Infidel comes this spellbinding memoir of survival and courage from Afghanistan’s most popular female politician.On the day Fawzia Koofi was born, her mother set her under the blazing Afghan sun to die. She was the nineteenth child of twenty-three in a family with seven wives, and her mother did not want another daughter. Despite severe burns that lasted into her teenage years, Fawzia survived and became the favourite child.In

This international bestseller is a "horrifying inside look at the lives of Libyan women under the Gaddafi regime . . . Powerful and compelling" ( Booklist, starred review).Soraya was just fifteen, a schoolgirl in the coastal town of Sirte, when she was given the honor of presenting a bouquet of flowers to Colonel Gaddafi, "the Guide," on a visit he was making to her school the following week. This one meeting—a presentation of flowers, a pat on the head fr...

**From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire."Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." —The Washington Post Book World**A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. ...