The Cook. The Dervish. The Geographer. The Artist. The Jongleur. The Scholar.  The Historian.  A group of men are imprisoned by their Sultan and await death; they are to be executed for petty crimes.  They all have one regret—not to have done the pilgrimage to Mecca. Whereupon, a talking parrot, centuries old, flies into their cell and rebukes them, suggesting they undertake the overland pilgrimage in their minds.   So the prisoners imagine the journey, weaving ...

Running a bed and breakfast in Riad Waqi, an old courtyard house in exotic Marrakech, is not the escape it seems for Ramzi, a disillusioned Scottish scientist. He cannot decide who are more exasperating, staff or guests, especially when one of the visitors, Paul Gallisot, a young Frenchman, is murdered in the city.Up for a challenge, Ramzi turns detective and makes his own investigations into the killing, at a time when Morocco prepares for the festival of Eid and the ritual slaugh...

Fado, a word meaning fate or destiny, refers to a type of music that embodies the Portuguese spirit of yearning.Told by a mysterious narrator, Fado is a novelette that spans one year, a year marked by religious and pagan festivals, political holidays and the seasons.At the heart of the tale are two characters, Maria Salvador, a Fado singer from Lisbon, and from Porto, Joaquim Oliveira, a veteran of the Colonial War in Mozambique, who suffers from PTSD, post-traumatic stress...

‘Sad is the day when the children of our revolution become our enemies.’ 1987. Algeria is on the brink of civil war.  In the market square in El Oued, a political fugitive Muhammad Madani poses as Rahwun, the storyteller.  With tales that roar back and forth through time, he narrates the history of that magical and formidable country, fables of intrigue and of strife, of children sold and of women forsaken, of families uprooted and of families emigrating to Franc...

Hydrogen: the lightest element, the lifting gas of airships—and highly inflammable.Lakehurst New Jersey, crash site of the Hindenburg. Alone in a motel room Peter Miller recalls how, as a German ten year old, he stowed away on a Zeppelin, shot down in a bombing raid on London in 1916. The only survivor, he is raised as an English orphan at a school for destitute boys founded by the eccentric Dr Hatropp.As a Fleet Street journalist, dispatched to Be...

Laura Fraser grows up in Sydney, motherless, with a cold, professional father and an artistic bent. Ravi Mendis lives on the other side of the globe -- exploring the seductive new world of the Internet, his father dead, his mother struggling to get by.Their stories alternate throughout Michelle de Kretser's ravishing novel, culminating in unlikely fates for them both, destinies influenced by travel -- voluntary in her case, enforced in his.With money from an inheritance, Laura sets...

*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti*Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World ...

In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Teheran to Oxiana--the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. The Road to Oxiana offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures, but also a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers.

Ibn Battutah set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned twenty-nine years later, he had visited most of the known world, travelling three times the distance Marco Polo covered. Spiritual backpacker, social climber, temporary hermit and failed ambassador, he braved brigands, blisters and his own prejudices. The outcome was a monumental travel classic.Captivated by this indefatigable man, award-winning travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smit...

The Medina -- the Old City -- of Fez is the best-preserved, medieval walled city in the world. Inside this vibrant Moroccan community, internet cafes and mobile phones coexist with a maze of donkey-trod alleyways, thousand-year-old sewer systems, and Arab-style houses, gorgeous with intricate, if often shabby, mosaic work.While vacationing in Morocco, Suzanna Clarke and her husband, Sandy, are inspired to buy a dilapidated, centuries-old riad in Fez with the aim of restoring it to ...

Imagine that a jewel-like garden overlooking Kabul is your ancestral home. Imagine a kitchen made fragrant with saffron strands and cardamom pods simmering in an authentic pilau. Now remember that you were born in London, your family in exile, and that you have never seen Afghanistan in peacetime.These are but the starting points of Saira Shah’s memoir, by turns inevitably exotic and unavoidably heartbreaking, in which she explores her family’s history in and out of Afghanistan. As...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.