Showing results by narrator "Neil Shah" in All Categories

Ernst is a gruff seventy-year-old Red Army veteran. Retired, he lives alone and spends his time laboring over his unpublished novels. Irena, in her mid-thirties, has been taking care of Ernst since his surgery two years earlier. Quiet and shy, Irena is in awe of Ernst's intellect. And as the months pass, Ernst comes to depend on the gentle young woman who runs his house. But Ernst's writing gives him no satisfaction, and he is haunted by his Communist past.

A master of the short story, Saadat Hasan Manto opens a window onto Bombay's demimonde - its prostitutes, rickshaw drivers, artists, and strays as well, probing the pain and bewilderment of the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs ripped apart by the India-Pakistan Partition. From a stray dog caught in the crossfire at the fresh border of India and Pakistan, to friendly neighbors turned enemy soldiers pausing for tea together in a momentary ceasefire - Manto shines incandescent light into hidden corners with an unflinching gaze, and a fierce humanism.

Set in contemporary India, A Burning is the story of three unforgettable characters, all dreaming of a better future, whose lives are changed for ever when they become caught up in the devastating aftermath of a terrorist attack. Jivan - a poor, young, Muslim girl, who dreams of going to college - faces a possible death sentence after being accused of collaborating with the terrorists. Lovely - an exuberant hijra who longs to be a Bollywood star - holds the alibi that can set Jivan free, but telling the truth will cost her everything she holds dear.

In this anthology of creative nonfiction, 28 writers set out to discover what they know, and don't know, about the person they call Mother. Celebrated writers Samia Serageldin and Lee Smith have curated a diverse and insightful collection that challenges stereotypes about mothers and expands our notions of motherhood in the South. The mothers in these essays were shaped, for good and bad, by the economic and political crosswinds of their time.

With technological advances and information sharing so prevalent, health care should be more transparent and easier to access than ever before. So why does it seem like everything about it - from pricing, drug development, and the emergence of new diseases to the intricacies of biologic and precision medicine therapies - is becoming more complex, not less?

In the Pittsburgh Marathon, 18,000 people from all over the world will participate. Some 9,500 will run a half marathon, 4,000 will run in relays, while 4,500 participants will attempt the full 26.2 miles. Over 200 will quit before it’s over. More than 100 will be injured and require medical treatment. And one man is going to be murdered. When Dr. Cyprus Keller lines up to start the race, he knows who is going to die - for the simple reason that he’s going to kill him.

An archeological team is excavating on the banks of the Betwa River near Jahnsi. A place where, legend has it, a couple forbidden to marry had run away to be together — forever cursing anyone who dares set foot on the island. When the head of the expedition defies the myth, the fallout is swift and deadly, the body found exactly as the ancient stories describe. Is the death a result of the ancient curse, or is it a down-to-earth case of murder?

When a six-year-old girl disappears and calling the police isn’t an option, her desperate mother, Pernilla, turns to an unlikely source for help. She finds a cryptic ad online for a private investigator: “Need help, but can’t contact the police?” That’s where Kouplan comes in. He’s an Iranian refugee living in hiding. He was forced to leave Iran after news of his and his brother's involvement with a radical newspaper hated by the regime was discovered. He makes a living as a P.I. working under the radar, waiting for the day he can legally apply for asylum.

In the lush world-banking capital of Geneva, Switzerland, three friends from Harvard Business School find their lives and their work unexpectedly intertwined. Catherine and Majid are handling investments for clients with dubious pedigrees. When their friend Rafe shows up in Geneva, he claims to be just another start-up hedge fund manager. But Rafe, after a moral awakening, is now an undercover agent with the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and he’s in Geneva secretly investigating his old friends, one of whom was his former lover.

Mysterium, known as Mount Sarasvati, looms over the Indian Himalayas as the range's tallest peak. Sarasvati "Sara" Troy is determined to reach the peak for which she was christened, and to climb it in honor of her mother, who perished in a mountaineering accident when Sara was just a child. She asks her father, a celebrated mountaineer and philosophy professor, to organize and lead the expedition. The six climbers he recruits are an uneasy mix. The party's journey is harrowing, taking them on a path that evokes the hell, purgatory, and heaven of Dante's Inferno.

Whilst working on a spreadsheet for a New York-based PR firm, Gerald has his consciousness uploaded into his company's Slack channel. He posts for help, but his colleagues assume it's an elaborate joke to exploit the new working-from-home policy and, now that Gerald's productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from...wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists co-worker Pradeep to care for his body and Slackbot, the service's AI assistant, to help him navigate his new digital reality.

The handsome Texas sailor who offers dinner to a runaway in Central Park. The Midwestern college girl who stops a cop in Times Square for restaurant advice. The Brooklyn man on a midnight subway who helps a weary tourist find her way to Chinatown. The Columbia University graduate student who encounters an unexpected object of beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art....

As the head of Open Learning at MIT, Sanjay Sarma has a daunting job description: to fling open the doors of the MIT experience for the benefit of the wider world. But if you're going to undertake such an ambitious project, you must first ask: how exactly does learning work? What conditions are most conducive? Are our traditional classroom methods - lecture, homework, test, repeat - effective? And if not, which techniques are? Grasp takes listeners across multiple frontiers, from fundamental neuroscience to cognitive psychology and beyond, as it explores the future of learning.

In December 2012, the violent gang rape of a young Indian woman in Delhi shocked the world. India was a country of booming modernisation twinned with centuries-old cultural riches. Was the cruelty of the assault indicative of something profoundly disturbing lurking beneath the surface? Sunny Hundal's arresting exploration of how Indian society treats its women argues exactly this. As a country, India has a disproportionate amount of men to women. They are financial and often social burdens upon their parents.

In the city of Mardin, near Turkey’s border with Syria, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo then travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.

When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquility of the nation's summer.

Acclaimed crime fiction writer Jim Nisbet sets forth a noir gem that lays bare the foibles of modern-day America with tremendous force. Banerjhee Rolf, a bright, levelheaded Indian American scientist, is content to spend his days with his wife, tending his garden and studying his beloved astronomy. When Rolf ’s relationship with Toby Pride, his seedy, drug-dealing neighbor, and Pride’s stoner girlfriend takes a weird turn, Rolf’s placid world is shattered, and he becomes a fugitive from justice.

A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work - labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised. Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. Undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses. Roustabouts who drill for oil on offshore rigs. And drone operators who kill people from thousands of miles away. These are the essential workers we prefer not to think about.

Originally published in the hopes of children understanding their place in the world better, both in a geographic and global sense, these stories by Post foreign correspondents feature the real-life stories of kids all over the world. From Yuki who rides a subway train to school every day in Tokyo to Sayeed who guides tourists on camel rides in Egypt, these children's stories carry the underlying message that in the eyes of our children, there is far more that unites us than divides us.

A Syria-born dancer offers his deeply personal story of war, statelessness, and the pursuit of the art of dance in this inspirational memoir.