Khartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning meeting place . Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan s long, troubled history of forced migration.In the pages of this book the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into En...

The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif traces an Afghani refugee's extraordinary journey - from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan to his forcved exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban to incarceration in an Australian detention centre ... and finally to freedom.

When Arcade Publishing originally contracted this extraordinary collection of poetry and literature, the Department of the Treasury was attempting to censor the publication of works from countries on America’s “enemies list.” Arcade, along with the PEN American Center, the Association of American Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, and the Association of American University Presses, filed a lawsuit in federal court against the United States government. Their landmark...

They'd met but once. Yet during that encounter, Jalia Shahbazi knew that her life was in danger.At least, her life as she wanted it. So she'd fled Bagestan, where she was re-enthroned royalty, for Europe, where she was refreshingly herself, to fight falling prey to the man his people called the Falcon: Sheikh Latif Abd al Razzaq Shahin. And when maintaining distance proved impossible, she flaunted the last weapon in her arsenal. Another man's ring.Yet Latif...

The instructions were simple: seek out and return home with the long-lost princess of Bagestan now that her family had regained control of the throne.But when he found her, Sheikh Sharif Azad al Dauleh fell hard and fast for Princess Shakira's sultry smile and mysterious aura. She was everything he never thought he'd wanted in a wife, and yet her fiery nature promised a lifetime of passion.He knew he needed to convince Shakira of the importance of fulfillin...

Latifa was born into an educated middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980. She dreamed of one day of becoming a journalist, she was interested in fashion, movies and friends. Her father was in the import/export business and her mother was a doctor.Then in September 1996, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. From that moment, Latifa, just 16 years old became a prisoner in her own home. Her school was closed. Her mother was banned from working. The simplest and most basic freedo...

_______________'Beautifully written in cunning, punning, glancing prose' - Independent'A whirlwind … Owes plenty to Salman Rushdie and some to Hollywood … Exuberant, knowingly exotic and deceptively serious' - Guardian'Kamila Shamsie has created a rich, bright world' - Times Literary Supplement_______________BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER O...

THE CARPET WARS is foreign correspondent Christopher Kremmer's riveting and timely account of a decade spent living, travelling and reporting from Asia and the Middle East.During his time reporting from Asia and the Middle East he formed an obsession with carpets and the 'perfect rug' - an obsession that saw him trace the threads of the carpet-making trade through the Islamic nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Along the way ...

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...

Iraq + 100 poses a question to ten Iraqi writers: what might your country look like in the year 2103 – a century after the disastrous American- and British-led invasion, and 87 years down the line from its current, nightmarish battle for survival? How might the effects of that one intervention reach across a century of repercussions, and shape the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens, or influence its economy, culture, or politics? Might Iraq have finally escaped the cycle of invasion...

This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south.Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in we...

When ten Pakistani men walk into Kathleen Jamie's small Scottish town on a peace march, in November 2001, she is thrown back to her own travels in Northern Pakistan and a book she wrote a decade earlier. Among Muslims is the account of Jamie's time travelling alone and living among the Shia and Ismaili Muslims in the Northern Areas - the mountainous regions wedged between Afghanistan, India and China and one of the most volatile borderlands in the world. A bold, sympathetic and superbly wr...