Joum's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 14 Dec 2016 13:56:38 -0800 60 Joum's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Half of a Yellow Sun 1102116
(back cover)]]> 541 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Joum 5 Adichie did some research before writing her novel and succeeds beautifully into describing war as many anthropologists do. Indeed, Adichie's characters all try to maintain a form of "normality" in their lives. They all want to live in a freed Biafra and discover little by little that war does not fulfill their dreams of freedom and equality but generates a new social system in which opportunistic individuals live comfortable lives while they are suffering from many depravations.
It is also quite disturbing to read how (as always!) foreign powers get involved in the massacre of a population, and how reporting on a war becomes a booming business/fame niche. Finally, every chapter contains the same sentence that accurately describes the war the characters went through : the world was quiet while we were dying. ]]> 4.26 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Joum
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2013/11/10
date added: 2016/12/14
shelves:
review:
Indubitably Adichie is a great writer. The book is about the creation and death of Biafra. The author narrates this political event using the point of views of the different characters. All are Igbo and see family members and friends killed because they are Igbo too.
Adichie did some research before writing her novel and succeeds beautifully into describing war as many anthropologists do. Indeed, Adichie's characters all try to maintain a form of "normality" in their lives. They all want to live in a freed Biafra and discover little by little that war does not fulfill their dreams of freedom and equality but generates a new social system in which opportunistic individuals live comfortable lives while they are suffering from many depravations.
It is also quite disturbing to read how (as always!) foreign powers get involved in the massacre of a population, and how reporting on a war becomes a booming business/fame niche. Finally, every chapter contains the same sentence that accurately describes the war the characters went through : the world was quiet while we were dying.
]]> Mother Night 9592 Librarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.]]> 282 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 0385334141 Joum 4 4.23 1961 Mother Night
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Joum
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality]]> 7640261
How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.

Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.

With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.

In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.]]> 416 Christopher Ryan Joum 5 3.95 2010 Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
author: Christopher Ryan
name: Joum
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/09/13
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]]> Kamal Jann 14287519 Mosaïque impressionnante de lieux et de personnages, Kamal Jann est la chorégraphie puissamment orchestrée du cynisme, de la violence et de la trahison. Sans doute le premier roman du Moyen-Orient à mettre en scène de façon implacable les rouages de la répression et la relation toute-puissante entre familles et pouvoir. La descendance maudite des Jann est condamnée, tels les Atrides, à tuer et s'entretuer, tandis que le peuple, écrasé, commence à rêver de liberté.
Dominique Eddé, née à Beyrouth, a entre autres publié Pourquoi il fait si sombre ?, Cerf-volant, et Le crime de Jean Genet.]]> 455 Dominique Eddé Joum 4
"Nous brillons dans les salons à disséquer, interpréter les versets du Coran à vanter leur insondable polysémie, alors que des brutes en chaleur fouettent les femmes, en son nom les lapident, les enterrent vivantes. La seule vérité qui puisse nous faire avaler notre lâcheté, c'est que nous avons peur! Nous crevons de peur!"
]]> 3.60 2012 Kamal Jann
author: Dominique Eddé
name: Joum
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/09/11
shelves:
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J'ai enfin terminé ce roman! L'auteure réussi à retranscrire tellement de pensées et frustrations que bien des arabes dit "occidentalisés" ressentent. Je n'ai ni la plume ni le l'esprit aiguisé de l'auteure, je m'arrêterai donc là, je conseille ce livre.

"Nous brillons dans les salons à disséquer, interpréter les versets du Coran à vanter leur insondable polysémie, alors que des brutes en chaleur fouettent les femmes, en son nom les lapident, les enterrent vivantes. La seule vérité qui puisse nous faire avaler notre lâcheté, c'est que nous avons peur! Nous crevons de peur!"

]]> لحظة تاريخ 15711464
ومن بعدها، تناوبت الدول المحتلة من كل حدب وصوب حتى صرنا في زمن الخصيان. ومن ملئ باليأس حقًا ولكنه لا يخلو من الأمل. فيه رجال حالمون، وانتفاضات ذبيحة، ورغبة تواقة للتغيير وثورات كامنة تحت التراب وأخرى ظهرت للنور، ومازلنا في انتظار زمن عربي جديد، ومخاض جديد، وولادة جديدة]]> 59 محمد المنسي قنديل Joum 0 to-read 3.62 2001 لحظة تاريخ
author: محمد المنسي قنديل
name: Joum
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/08/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> So Long a Letter 151374 90 Mariama Bâ 0435905554 Joum 4 3.98 1980 So Long a Letter
author: Mariama Bâ
name: Joum
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/08/19
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]]> عائد إلى حيفا 3331756
تم تناول القصه في عمليين سينمائيين الاول يحمل نفس عنوان الروايه
من إخراج قاسم حول، وإنتاج مؤسسة الأرض للإنتاج السينمائي عام 1981م. حصد الفيلم أربع جوائز عالمية
والاخر بعنوان ""المتبقي "" من أخراج الإيرانى سيف الله داد وإنتاج إيراني سوري عام 1994م.

تم تناول القصه أيضا في عمل تلفزيوني للمخرج السوري باسل الخطيب .
وفي عمل مسرحي أردني أيضا]]> 76 Ghassan Kanafani Joum 0 to-read 4.37 1969 عائد إلى حيفا
author: Ghassan Kanafani
name: Joum
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The House of Mirth 17728
Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by ‘old money� and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something � fastidiousness or integrity- prevents her from making a ‘suitable� match.]]> 351 Edith Wharton 1844082938 Joum 0 to-read 3.97 1905 The House of Mirth
author: Edith Wharton
name: Joum
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1905
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Joum 0 to-read 4.29 1943 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
author: Betty Smith
name: Joum
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/05/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Awakening 58345 The Awakening shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of a woman trapped in a stifling marriage, who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the confines of her domestic situation.

Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. Edmund Wilson characterized it as a work "quite uninhibited and beautifully written, which anticipates D. H. Lawrence in its treatment of infidelity." Although the theme of marital infidelity no longer shocks, few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.]]> 195 Kate Chopin 0543898083 Joum 0 to-read 3.69 1899 The Awakening
author: Kate Chopin
name: Joum
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1899
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Summer's end 3296777 249 Adalet Ağaoğlu 1584980591 Joum 0 to-read 3.74 1981 Summer's end
author: Adalet Ağaoğlu
name: Joum
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed, #1)]]> 175545
Memed, a high-spirited, kindhearted boy, grows up in a desperately poor mountain village whose inhabitants are kept in virtual slavery by the local landlord. Determined to escape from the life of toil and humiliation to which he has been born, he flees but is caught, tortured, and nearly killed. When at last he does get away, it is to set up as a roving brigand, celebrated in song, who could be a liberator to his people—unless, like the thistles that cover the mountain slopes of his native region, his character has taken an irremediably harsh and unforgiving form.]]> 372 Yaşar Kemal 159017139X Joum 0 to-read 4.36 1955 Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed, #1)
author: Yaşar Kemal
name: Joum
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Museum of Innocence 6282753
So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.

It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.

For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure. In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart’s reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society’s manners and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.

A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional—its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.]]> 536 Orhan Pamuk 0307266761 Joum 2 3.76 2008 The Museum of Innocence
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Joum
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/04/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Socialism Is Coming: Stand Aside]]> 270682 198 Aziz Nesin 0971184623 Joum 0 to-read 4.44 1965 Socialism Is Coming: Stand Aside
author: Aziz Nesin
name: Joum
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Forty Rules of Love 6642715 Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mir­rors her own and that Zahara—like Shams—has come to set her free.

In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz—that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love.]]> 354 Elif Shafak Joum 3 4.15 2009 The Forty Rules of Love
author: Elif Shafak
name: Joum
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/30
shelves:
review:

]]> Conversation in the Cathedral 53970 Conversation in The Cathedral takes place in 1950s Peru during the dictatorship of Manuel Apolinario Odría Amoretti. Over beers and a sea of freely spoken words, the conversation flows between two individuals, Santiago and Ambrosia, who talk of their tormented lives and of the overall degradation and frustration that has slowly taken over their town. Through a complicated web of secrets and historical references, Mario Vargas Llosa analyzes the mental and moral mechanisms that govern power and the people behind it. More than a historic analysis, Conversation in The Cathedral is a groundbreaking novel that tackles identity as well as the role of a citizen and how a lack of personal freedom can forever scar a people and a nation.]]> 608 Mario Vargas Llosa 0060732806 Joum 0 to-read 4.32 1969 Conversation in the Cathedral
author: Mario Vargas Llosa
name: Joum
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Journal d’un prince banni 20306515
Tout livre est un contrat de confiance, et le livre d'un prince marocain encore plus qu'un autre. En effet, jamais dans la longue histoire dynastique du royaume, un membre de la famille régnante n'a pris la plume pour partager ses idées avec l'«extérieur», au-delà des murs du Palais et, encore moins, par-delà les frontières du pays. À cela, il y a de bonnes raisons, qui ne relèvent pas seulement d'un royal dédain pour le monde en dehors du méchouar, le «Conseil», c'est-à-dire l'enceinte du pouvoir monarchique. Écrire un livre, c'est se livrer. La décision a mûri en moi pendant des années. Maintenant que je m'y suis résolu, je ne vais pas m'arrêter à mi-chemin. Dans les pages qui suivent, je ne mâche pas mes mots. Rien de ce que je pense n'est dissimulé derrière des arabesques.
Pour autant, on cherchera en vain de «petites phrases», du fiel distillé, des attaques ad hominem ou des secrets inavouables. J'ai trop subi de pareilles bassesses pour m'y livrer à mon tour. En revanche, un système opaque est décrit de l'intérieur avec le franc-parler qu'abhorre la société de cour au Maroc pour qui la souplesse invertébrée et le verbe tarabiscoté tiennent lieu de raffinement et de subtilité. Pour ma part, je préfère être direct : je ne suis pas davantage le «prince rouge» que Mohammed VI n'est le «roi des pauvres» - en ce qui le concerne, quinze ans de règne devraient suffire pour en convaincre même le plus jobard parmi nous. Quant au «prince rouge», il n'existe que dans les miroirs déformants des médias. Je n'ai jamais été communiste ou socialiste. Je ne suis même pas antimonarchiste par principe, un «mauvais prince» en quelque sorte. Cependant, je serais prêt à tirer un trait sur la monarchie chérifienne si j'arrivais à la conclusion qu'elle n'est plus d'aucune utilité pour les Marocains, qu'elle interdit toute évolution vers la démocratie, la prospérité et l'État de droit. Trancher cette question, c'est précisément l'objet de ce livre. D'ores et déjà, je suis persuadé qu'il faut démanteler le makhzen, c'est-à-dire notre pouvoir pseudo-traditionnel qui cumule les tares du «despotisme oriental» et de la tyrannie bureaucratique héritée de l'administration coloniale.
Je ne suis ni un républicain à tout crin ni - je revendique le double sens - un monarchiste dans l'absolu. Je pourrais très bien vivre dans une république marocaine, si ce régime me paraissait la meilleure option pour mon pays. Et quand bien même la république ne serait pas la meilleure voie, l'adhésion à la monarchie devra de toute façon être refondée sur de nouvelles bases, plus saines. Mon point de départ est donc la question suivante : que peut encore apporter au Maroc la monarchie comme forme de gouvernance ? Que peut-elle sauvegarder, ou mieux faire éclore, qu'un autre régime ? Je conçois sans drame que, dans un contexte historique donné, la réponse puisse être défavorable à la monarchie. Mais je ne m'interdis pas non plus de penser qu'après le Printemps arabe, la monarchie puisse encore être utile au Maroc, c'est-à-dire «historiquement productive» pour faire advenir la démocratie au moindre coût humain, sans violences. C'est sur ce choix de fond que je veux m'expliquer dans ce livre.
De quelle façon ? En livrant ma vérité, toute ma vérité d'homme et de prince, une fois pour toutes. C'est à prendre ou à laisser, en partie ou en bloc. Cette décision appartient au lecteur, et à lui seul, dès lors que je remplis ma part de notre contrat de confiance. D'emblée, je vais donc être explicite. Je ne demande à personne de s'engager pour moi mais seulement pour que le Maroc - patrie ou pays ami - change. Je ne suis candidat à rien et ne souhaite prendre la place de personne. En même temps, je ne m'interdis aucune ambition au service de mon pays. Si le Maroc veut devenir un «royaume pour tous», je serai avec lui.]]> 368 Moulay Hicham El Alaoui 2246851653 Joum 1 Second, there was no analysis, and this is very disturbing coming from an author who claims to be an "intellectual" (مثقف). Adding two or three names of well-known writers and some numbers from the World Bank without proper citations does not give to the book more legitimacy and seems out of place in an autobiography or memoir.
Third, do not read this book if you want to understand the Moroccan power structures and dynamics. I would recommend instead wikileak cables about Morocco, it is less expensive.
Finally, this book could have been the beginning of an interesting talk about privileges, networks and opportunities, instead it is an "anthology" of unresolved issues. ]]> 3.37 2014 Journal d’un prince banni
author: Moulay Hicham El Alaoui
name: Joum
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2014
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2014/04/16
shelves:
review:
This book was an absolute disappointment for different reasons. First, it lacked of structure, there was no argument to follow. It was as if the author put together a bunch of anecdotes and got them published for some obscure reason. It was badly edited, paragraphs are cut at the wrong place and exclamation points are overly used.
Second, there was no analysis, and this is very disturbing coming from an author who claims to be an "intellectual" (مثقف). Adding two or three names of well-known writers and some numbers from the World Bank without proper citations does not give to the book more legitimacy and seems out of place in an autobiography or memoir.
Third, do not read this book if you want to understand the Moroccan power structures and dynamics. I would recommend instead wikileak cables about Morocco, it is less expensive.
Finally, this book could have been the beginning of an interesting talk about privileges, networks and opportunities, instead it is an "anthology" of unresolved issues.
]]> Memoirs of Hadrian 12172 347 Marguerite Yourcenar 0374529264 Joum 3 4.27 1951 Memoirs of Hadrian
author: Marguerite Yourcenar
name: Joum
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Commander Of The Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite - A Study In Segmented Politics]]> 1988903 وقد صدر الكتاب أول مرة باللغة العربية سنة 1982 عن دار الوحدة ببيروت لكن طبعتها لم تر النور بالمغرب ولم يسمح لها بالتداول في السوق كما لم يسمح بطبع هذا الكتاب في نسخة مزيدة ومصححة ومنقحة إلا في شهر مايو من السنة الجارية.
maghress.com]]> 368 John Waterbury 0297000195 Joum 4 to-read 4.20 The Commander Of The Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite - A Study In Segmented Politics
author: John Waterbury
name: Joum
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Human Stain (The American Trilogy, #3)]]> 11734
Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."]]> 361 Philip Roth Joum 0 to-read 3.89 2000 The Human Stain (The American Trilogy, #3)
author: Philip Roth
name: Joum
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> American Pastoral 11650 Pulitzer Prize Winner (1998)

In American Pastoral, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all the twentieth century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Seymour 'Swede' Levov—a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory—comes of age in thriving, triumphant post-war America. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.

For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]> 432 Philip Roth Joum 5 3.93 1997 American Pastoral
author: Philip Roth
name: Joum
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/01/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Passion arabe: Journal, 2011-2013]]> 17997880 496 Gilles Kepel 2070140776 Joum 1 3.71 2013 Passion arabe: Journal, 2011-2013
author: Gilles Kepel
name: Joum
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at: 2013/10/24
date added: 2013/11/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bastard of Istanbul 98920
In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country’s violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the “bastard� of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya’s mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is a bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of international fiction.]]> 368 Elif Shafak 0670038342 Joum 4 3.87 2006 The Bastard of Istanbul
author: Elif Shafak
name: Joum
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/10/20
shelves:
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]]> Chicago 16160859 A medley of Egyptian and American lives collides on the campus of the University of Illinois Medical Center in a post-9/11 Chicago, and crises of identity abound. Among the players are an atheistic anti-establishment American professor of the sixties generation, whose relationship with a younger African-American woman becomes a moving target for intolerance; a veiled Ph.D. candidate whose conviction in the code of her traditional upbringing is shaken by her exposure to American society; an emigre who has fervently embraced his new American identity, but who cannot escape his Egyptian roots when faced with the issue of his daughter's 'honor'; an Egyptian State Security informant who spouts religious doctrines while hankering after money and power; and a dissident student poet who comes to America with the sole aim of financing his literary aspirations, but whose experience in Chicago turns out to be more than he bargained for.
This tightly plotted page-turner is set far from the downtown Cairo of Al Aswany's "The Yacoubian Building", but is no less unflinching an examination of contemporary Egyptian lives.]]> 357 Alaa Al Aswany Joum 3 3.65 2007 Chicago
author: Alaa Al Aswany
name: Joum
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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]]> Léon L'africain 326479 Amin Maalouf 0828895708 Joum 4 4.03 1986 Léon L'africain
author: Amin Maalouf
name: Joum
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1986
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories]]> 154829
As the new teller of these tales Abu-Lughod draws on anthropological and feminist insights to construct a critical ethnography. She explores how the telling of these stories challenges the power of anthropological theory to render adequately the lives of others and the way feminist theory appropriates Third World women. Writing Women's Worlds is thus at once a vivid set of stories and a study in the politics of representation.]]> 244 Lila Abu-Lughod 0520083040 Joum 0 to-read 3.98 1992 Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories
author: Lila Abu-Lughod
name: Joum
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/05/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Representations of the Intellectual]]> 166314
BBC episodes presented by Edward Said: ]]> 121 Edward W. Said 0679761276 Joum 5 4.14 1994 Representations of the Intellectual
author: Edward W. Said
name: Joum
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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]]> Inés of My Soul 96440
Inés of My Soul is a work of breathtaking scope that masterfully dramatizes the known events of Inés Suárez's life, crafting them into a novel rich with the narrative brilliance and passion readers have come to expect from Isabel Allende.]]> 321 Isabel Allende 0061161543 Joum 5 3.66 2006 Inés of My Soul
author: Isabel Allende
name: Joum
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[South of the Border, West of the Sun]]> 17799 Alternate cover edition here.

Growing up in the suburbs of post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.]]> 190 Haruki Murakami 0099448572 Joum 4 3.89 1992 South of the Border, West of the Sun
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Joum
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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]]> Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]> 296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Joum 4 4.01 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Joum
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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]]> Freedom 7905092
But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz—outré rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival—still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become "a very different kind of neighbor," an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?

In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
(jacket)]]> 562 Jonathan Franzen 0374158460 Joum 3 3.78 2010 Freedom
author: Jonathan Franzen
name: Joum
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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]]> رجال في الشمس 4653511 والروائي والقاص والناقد، فكان مبدعاً في كتاباته كما كان مبدعاً في حياته ونضاله واستشهاده. وقد نال عام 1966 جائزة أصدقاء الكتاب في لبنان "لأفضل رواية عن روايته" ما تبقى لكم كما نال جائزة منظمة الصحافيين العالمية (I.O.J) عام 1974، ونال جائزة "اللوتس" التي يمنحها اتحاد كتاب آسيا وأفريقيا عام 1975. وتعد روايته رجال في الشمس التي صدرت في بيروت عام 1963 من أوائل الأعمال الروائية الفلسطينية التي تكتب عن التشرد والموت والحيرة. وفيها يروي حكاية ثلاثة فلسطينيين من أجيال مختلفة، يلتقون حول ضرورة إيجاد حل فردي لمشكلة الإنسان الفلسطيني المعيشية عبر الهرب إلى الكويت، حيث النفط والثروة. أبو قيس. الرجل العجوز الذي يحلم ببناء غرفة في مكان ما خارج المخيم، أسعد: الشاب الذي يحلم بدنانير الكويت وبحياة جديدة، ومروان: الصغير الذي يحاول أن يتغلب على مأساته المعيشية، فشقيقه في الكويت تركهم دون معيل لأنه تزوج، والده ترك أمه ليتزوج بامرأة تملك بيتاً عليه إذن أن يعيل العائلة فيقرر الوصول إلى الكويت.
يدين غسان كنفاني في روايته كل الأطراف التي تسببت في نكبة فلسطين، القيادات العاجزة،والقيادات الخائنة،والشعب المستسلم،والذين
تخلوا عن الأرض ليبحثوا عن خلاصهم الخاص]]> 93 Ghassan Kanafani Joum 5 4.21 1963 رجال في الشمس
author: Ghassan Kanafani
name: Joum
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong]]> 212932 Maalouf contends that many of us would reject our inherited conceptions of identity, to which we cling through habit, if only we examined them more closely. The future of society depends on accepting all identities, while recognizing our individualism.]]> 176 Amin Maalouf 0142002577 Joum 4 3.99 1998 In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
author: Amin Maalouf
name: Joum
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> The Yacoubian Building 128711
All manner of flawed and fragile humanity reside in the Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor now slowly decaying in the smog and bustle of downtown Cairo: a fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed "scientist of women"; a sultry, voluptuous siren; a devout young student, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism; a newspaper editor helplessly in love with a policeman; a corrupt and corpulent politician, twisting the Koran to justify his desires.

These disparate lives careen toward an explosive conclusion in Alaa Al Aswany's remarkable international bestseller. Teeming with frank sexuality and heartfelt compassion, this book is an important window on to the experience of loss and love in the Arab world.]]> 256 Alaa Al Aswany 0060878134 Joum 4 3.76 2002 The Yacoubian Building
author: Alaa Al Aswany
name: Joum
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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]]> The Ravishing of Lol Stein 280 181 Marguerite Duras Joum 3 3.74 1964 The Ravishing of Lol Stein
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Joum
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1964
rating: 3
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]]> Moderato cantabile 11926 122 Marguerite Duras 3518376780 Joum 3 3.52 1958 Moderato cantabile
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Joum
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1958
rating: 3
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]]> The Sirens of Baghdad 213210
The third novel in Yasmina Khadra’s bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism brings readers into Baghdad.

Forced to leave the University of Baghdad when the Americans invade Iraq, a young man from a small desert village returns home, where he witnesses three events that transform him. First, American soldiers at a checkpoint kill the sweet and beloved “village idiot.� Several days later, an American plane bombs a wedding on the outskirts of the village. And then one night, soldiers looking for terrorists come to the young man’s own home and humiliate his father in full view of the terrified family. Consumed by the desire to avenge this unspeakable act, the youth leaves the village for the city.

Baghdad is going up in flames. The young man searches for a place to stay before being taken in by a radical group and convincing its members that he is willing to do anything to help their cause. After proving his mettle by participating in several attacks, he is sent to Beirut to undertake a super-secret mission that will take him to London. As the time to board the plane nears, he struggles to reconcile his mission with his moral principles.

A masterful and chilling look at violence and its effects on ordinary people, The Sirens of Baghdad probes situations few writers dare examine. Powerfully written like Khadra’s previous novels, it explores the depths of human nature and shows that, even in the most horrific circumstances, good can prevail.]]> 320 Yasmina Khadra 038552174X Joum 3 3.89 2006 The Sirens of Baghdad
author: Yasmina Khadra
name: Joum
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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]]> The Attack 213206
From the graphic, beautifully rendered description of the bombing that opens the novel to the searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political bias, hatred, and polemics, it probes deep inside the Muslim world and gives readers a profound understanding of what seems impossible to understand.]]> 257 Yasmina Khadra 0385517483 Joum 3 3.83 2005 The Attack
author: Yasmina Khadra
name: Joum
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> Snow 11691
A spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings � for love, art, power, and God � set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order; by the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings–for love, art, power, and God–set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.

Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity–a frozen sea these many years–leads him to Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicenter of the suicides.

No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are not purely journalistic; for in Kars, once a province of Ottoman and then Russian glory, now a cultural gray-zone of poverty and paralysis, there is also Ipek, a radiant friend of Ka's youth, lately divorced, whom he has never forgotten. As a snowstorm, the fiercest in memory, descends on the town and seals it off from the modern, westernized world that has always been Ka's frame of reference, he finds himself drawn in unexpected directions: not only headlong toward the unknowable Ipek and the desperate hope for love–or at least a wife–that she embodies, but also into the maelstrom of a military coup staged to restrain the local Islamist radicals, and even toward God, whose existence Ka has never before allowed himself to contemplate. In this surreal confluence of emotion and spectacle, Ka begins to tap his dormant creative powers, producing poem after poem in untimely, irresistible bursts of inspiration. But not until the snows have melted and the political violence has run its bloody course will Ka discover the fate of his bid to seize a last chance for happiness.

Blending profound sympathy and mischievous wit, Snow illuminates the contradictions gripping the individual and collective heart in many parts of the Muslim world. But even more, by its narrative brilliance and comprehension of the needs and duties]]> 463 Orhan Pamuk Joum 4 3.60 2002 Snow
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Joum
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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]]> Nedjma 989504 Nedjma is a masterpiece of North African writing. Its intricate plot involves four men in love with the beautiful woman whose name serves as the title of the novel. Nedjma is the central figure of this disorienting novel, but more than the unfortunate wife of a man she does not love, more than the unwilling cause of rivalry among many suitors, Nedjma is the symbol of Algeria. Kateb has crafted a novel that is the saga of the founding ancestors of Algeria through the conquest of Numidia by the Romans, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and French colonial conquest. Nedjma is symbolic of the rich and sometimes bloody past of Algeria, of its passions, of its tenderness; it is the epic story of a human quest for freedom and happiness.]]> 388 Kateb Yacine 0813913136 Joum 0 to-read 3.62 1956 Nedjma
author: Kateb Yacine
name: Joum
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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]]> Bel-Ami 780581 416 Guy de Maupassant 0140443150 Joum 3 3.85 1885 Bel-Ami
author: Guy de Maupassant
name: Joum
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1885
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/01/18
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]]> Thérèse Raquin 110871 Therese Raquin is a clinically observed, sinister tale of adultery and murder among the lower classes in nineteenth-century Parisian society.

Set in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a dingy haberdasher's shop in the passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, this powerful novel tells how the heroine and her lover, Laurent, kill her husband, Camille, but are subsequently haunted by visions of the dead man, and prevented from enjoying the fruits of their crime.

Zola's shocking tale dispassionately dissects the motivations of his characters--mere "human beasts", who kill in order to satisfy their lust--and stands as a key manifesto of the French Naturalist movement, of which the author was the founding father. Published in 1867, this is Zola's most important work before the Rougon-Macquart series and introduces many of the themes that can be traced through the later novel cycle.]]> 201 Émile Zola 0140449442 Joum 3 3.73 1867 Thérèse Raquin
author: Émile Zola
name: Joum
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1867
rating: 3
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]]> The Lover 275 117 Marguerite Duras Joum 5 3.79 1984 The Lover
author: Marguerite Duras
name: Joum
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> Identity 28635
With stunning artfulness in expanding and playing variations on the meaningful moment, Milan Kundera has made this situation--and the vague sense of panic it inspires--the very fabric of his novel. Here brevity goes hand in hand with intensity, and a moment of bewilderment marks the start of a labyrinthine journey during which the reader repeatedly crosses the border between the real and the unreal, between what occurs in the world outside, and what the mind creates in its solitude.

Of all contemporary writers, only Kundera can transform such a hidden and disconcerting perception into the material for a novel, one of his finest, most painful, and most enlightening. Which, surprisingly, turns out to be a love story.]]> 176 Milan Kundera 0060930314 Joum 5 3.73 1997 Identity
author: Milan Kundera
name: Joum
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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]]> Ignorance 78728 A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they had chosen to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence "their memories no longer match." We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion. Then again, what can we expect of our weak memory? It records only "an insignificant, minuscule particle" of the past, "and no one knows why it's this bit and not any other bit." We live our lives sunk in a vast forgetting, a fact we refuse to recognize. Only those who return after twenty years, like Odysseus returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance firsthand.

Milan Kundera is the only author today who can take such dizzying concepts as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.

Author Biography: The Franco-Czech novelist Milan Kundera was born in Brno and has lived in France, his second homeland, for more than twenty years.

He is the author of the novels The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Farewell Party, The Books of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short story collection Laughable Loves, all originally written in Czech.

Like Slowness, his two earlier nonfiction works, The Art ofthe Novel and Testaments Betrayed, were originally written in French.

]]> 195 Milan Kundera 0060002107 Joum 5 3.85 2000 Ignorance
author: Milan Kundera
name: Joum
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2000
rating: 5
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]]> Laughable Loves 26101 Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then was subsequently banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and stratagems employed by women and especially men as they try to come to terms with needs and impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings with it painful insights and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity and a constant need for reassurance. Thus a young couple on holiday start a game of pretence that threatens to destroy their relationship, two middle-aged men go in search of girls they don't really want, a young man renews contact with an older woman who feels humiliated by her ageing body, an elderly doctor uses his beautiful wife to increase his attraction and minister to his sexual vanity. In Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera shows himself, once again, as a master of fiction's most graceful illusions and surprises.]]> 287 Milan Kundera 0571206921 Joum 5 3.91 1970 Laughable Loves
author: Milan Kundera
name: Joum
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1970
rating: 5
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]]> Immortality 28634
'It will make you cleverer, maybe even a better lover. Not many novels can do that.' Nicholas Lezard, GQ]]> 400 Milan Kundera 057114456X Joum 5 4.16 1990 Immortality
author: Milan Kundera
name: Joum
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unbearable Lightness of Being]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Joum 5 4.12 1984 The Unbearable Lightness of Being
author: Milan Kundera
name: Joum
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]>