John Cullen
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Set in Kabul under the rule of the Taliban, this novel takes readers into the lives of two couples: Mohsen, who comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, who was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology...
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"This response to Camus's The Stranger is at once a love story and a political manifesto about post-colonial Algeria, Islam, and the irrelevance of Arab lives. He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus's classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name--Musa--and...
3) Wanderer
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"Hermin, a composer and instructor, leads a secluded life near the Bourbonnais Mountains in France, composing a homage to Schubert. On a bitter January night, this studious peace is broken when his former pupil, Lenny, a piano prodigy, mysteriously knocks at his door. The two men must confront the ghosts of their past, somewhere between"--
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Follow Your Heart is a bittersweet tale that explores the reflections and revelations of aging. This lyrical novel has earned author Susanna Tamaro prestigious awards as it quickly became an international success, touching the hearts of listeners worldwide.
Over 1.8 million copies have been sold in Italy alone. With winter and death approaching, Olga, an elderly Italian woman, writes a long letter to her granddaughter in America. In it, she shares...
5) Villa triste
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Escaping to the small French lakeside town near Switzerland, a young man hides among the summer visitors, until he meets a young actress and a strange doctor, who invite him into their world of parties and debaucherous nights.
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"Inspired by true events, this gorgeous, haunting novel intertwines the lives of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders in Italy. It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn't let that stop her. The daughter of a Chippewa woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the...
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Based on the life of the great short-story writer Raymond Carver, particularly his last ten years, Scissors is a funny, compassionate, and convincing portrayal of the creative life: its compulsions, rewards, and frustrations, and its affinities with tragedy.
Raymond is a writer whose life is fraught with personal and creative struggle. His first marriage, to Marianne, is intense, passionate, and unhealthy. After his divorce, he
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"Set in the French and Spanish courts of the eighteenth century, this novel is based on a true story about the fate of two young princesses caught in the intrigues and secrets of the moment Philippe d'Orleans, the regent of France, has a gangrenous heart--the result of a life of debauchery, alcohol, power, and flattery. One morning in 1721, he decides to marry eleven-year-old Louis XV to the daughter of Philippe V of Spain, who is only four. Orleans...
10) Khalil: a novel
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"From the internationally bestselling author of The Attack and The Swallows of Kabul, a gripping first-person narrative about one young man's involvement in France's worst terrorist attack. Khalil, a 23-year-old Belgian of Moroccan descent, plans to detonate a suicide vest in a crowd outside the Stade de France on November 13, 2015. Explosions are rocking Paris, at cafes and the Bataclan theater, and when other bombs drive the stadium crowd to flee...
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A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelists. Part suspenseful thriller, part wickedly effective social satire, "Empty Hearts" is a novel for our times, examining urgent questions of morality, politics, and culture, and presenting a startling vision of a future where empathy is a thing of the past.
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"Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant, timely fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life and humanity's place in the world. Two boys venture from their village to hunt in a nearby forest, where they shoot down bats with glee, and cook their prey over an open fire. Within a month, they are dead, bodies ravaged by an insidious disease that neither the local healer's potions nor...
13) April in Paris
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Michael Wallner's thrilling first novel, set in occupied France during World War II, movingly recounts the impossible love affair between a German soldier and a French resistance fighter.Roth, a young soldier in the SS and a fluent French translator, works as an interpreter during the interrogation of Resistance fighters. But while off-duty, he slips away from his fellow officers, changes into civilian clothes, and wanders aimlessly through Paris...
14) The turncoat
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"Previously unpublished, this German postwar classic is one of the best books of this major writer, who died in 2014. The last summer before the end of World War II, Walter Proska is posted to a small unit tasked with ensuring the safety of a railway line deep in the forest on the border with Ukraine and Byelorussia. In this swampy region, a handful of men--stunned by the heat, attacked by mosquitoes, and abandoned by their own troops in the face...
15) Miral
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Soon to be a major motion picture from award-winning director Julian Schnabel, starring Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) Written by the much-admired Italo-Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, Miral is a novel that focuses on remarkable women whose lives unfold in the turbulent political climate along the borders of Israel and Palestine. The story begins with Hind, a woman who sacrifices everything to establish a school for refugee Palestinian girls...
17) The attack
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Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room. But this night...
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"A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms"--Back cover.