*A Radio 4 Book of the Week*'Captivating, mind-boggling and deeply disturbing' – Maureen Freely'Humane, thoughtful and urgent — this book will make you think, make you laugh, make you cry, but also make you burn with rage' – Dr Mary WellesleyA thought-provoking deep dive into the global fertility industry and the commodification of the maternal body__________Should surrogacy be a...

Born in London to a Turkish mother and British father, Alev Scott moved to Istanbul to discover what it means to be Turkish in a country going through rapid political and social change, with an extraordinary past still linked to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and an ever more surprising present under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.From the European buzz of modern-day Constantinople to the Arabic-speaking towns of the south-east, Turkish Awakening investigates mass migration...

*A Radio 4 Book of the Week*'Captivating, mind-boggling and deeply disturbing' – Maureen Freely'Humane, thoughtful and urgent — this book will make you think, make you laugh, make you cry, but also make you burn with rage' – Dr Mary WellesleyA thought-provoking deep dive into the global fertility industry and the commodification of the maternal body__________Should surrogacy be a...

An investigative journalist uncovers a hidden custom in Afghanistan that will transform your understanding of what it means to grow up as a girl.“An astonishingly clear picture of this resourceful, if imperfect, solution to the problem of girlhood in a society where women have few rights and overwhelming restrictions.”—The Boston GlobeIn Afghanistan, a culture ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebratio...

A riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner—an astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women's rights in the Muslim world.Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful and fiercely opinionated, and Ali, shy and tender...

Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award, Kiran Desai’s extraordinary novel of love and loss, now reissued with a new introduction by the authorPublished to astonishing acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, an embittered judge wants only to retire in peace when his orphaned grand...

Winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for NonfictionWinner of the Freedom to Read AwardWinner of the Hubert Evans PrizeIn the midst of an unfolding international crisis, renowned journalist Deborah Campbell finds herself swept up in the mysterious disappearance of Ahlam, her guide and friend. Campbell's frank, personal account of a journey through fear and the triumph of friendship and courage is as ...

The poignant and powerful story of a young Iranian woman’s tenuous life in a country she thought she could change“Affecting . . . an indelible portrait of the author’s family and a highly personal take on Iran’s social and political evolution.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesAzadeh Moaveni, longtime Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, returns to Iran to cover the rise of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Living ...

In September 1996, fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother, while shots rang out in the dark outside the family home in Karachi. This was the night her father Murtaza was murdered. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best-known political dynasties.Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of a family of feudal landlords who became powerbrokers. It is an epic tale of intrigue, the making o...

In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, women were forbidden to work or go to school, they could not leave their homes without a male chaperone, and they could not be seen without a head-to-toe covering called the burqa. A woman’s slightest infractions were met with brutal public beatings. That is why it is both appropriate and incredible that the sole effective civil resistance to Taliban rule was made by women. Veiled Courage reveals the remarkable bravery and spirit of the ...

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 ...

Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Through reported conversations she creates a vivid picture of life in this coastal fragment of self-governing Palestine. Bombed and cut-off from normal contact with the rest of the world, life in Gaza is beset with structural, medical and mental health problems, yet it is also bursting with political engagement and underwritten by an intense enj...