Showing results by narrator "Fajer Al-Kaisi" in All Categories

In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians - who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives - and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold - a grime-stained scrap of fabric - that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal.

Voters say they are disillusioned with capitalism, but a system so distorted by government interventions is a dysfunctional version of free market ideals. As a result, productivity and economic growth have slowed sharply, shrinking the pie for everyone and stoking popular anger. Since these flaws developed as the government expanded, building an even bigger state will only double down on what’s gone wrong. The answer Sharma offers is a series of seven fixes to restore the balance between state support and free markets and lay the path to a more prosperous and happier future.

Thirty diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators - including Renee Watson (Piecing Me Together), Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon), Meg Medina (Merci Suarez Changes Gears), and Adam Gidwitz (The Inquisitor's Tale) - engage young people in frank discussions about racism, identity, and self-esteem. Featuring stories filled with love, acceptance, truth, peace, and an assurance that there can be hope for a better tomorrow, The Talk is an inspiring anthology and must-have resource published in partnership with Just Us Books.

In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.

In this offering from Morris Award finalist Stephanie Oakes, three riveting points of view are woven together in a story that's part historical mystery, part contemporary coming-of-age, and completely unputdownable. When Molly gets a package leading her to Pepper, they're tasked with solving a decades-old mystery: find out who killed Ava back in 1989. Using Ava's diary for clues, Molly and Pepper realize there's more to her life - and death - than meets the eye. Someone is lying to them. And someone out there is guiding them along, desperate for answers.

In Going Home, Raja Shehadeh, the Orwell Prize-winning author of Palestinian Walks, takes us on a series of journeys around his hometown of Ramallah. Set in a single day - the day that happens to be the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank - the audiobook is a powerful and moving record and chronicle of the changing face of his city.

Guardian spirits. Divine presences. Demonic powers. Ghosts. The concept of "genius loci" is indeed an ancient one, found in nearly every human mythology. Genius Loci is a huge anthology of 31 all-new fantasy and science fiction stories drawing on the rich tradition of place-as-person. Within this audiobook, the authors present stories of sentient deserts, beneficent forests, lonely shrubs, and protective planetary spirits, as edited by Jaym Gates.

Sébastien recently moved to supernatural Paris hoping to get away from his troubles at home and live a peaceful life learning magic. But what are you going to do when the really hot vampire you made out with last night to forget your troubles turns out to be your new neighbor? Sébastien (a demisexual boy with “main character hair” and a bunny named Pierre), meet Elia (a hot, supermodel, vampire neighbor and crush).

By turns essay, memoir and cultural study, Finding the Raga is Amit Chaudhuri's singular account of his discovery of, and enduring passion for, North Indian music: an ancient, evolving tradition whose principles and practices will alter the listener's notion of what music might - and can - be.

This riveting memoir follows a Lebanese Muslim American and 30-year US Marine veteran who suffered a six-month ordeal at the hands of a brutal regime in Yemen - and remained loyal to his country through it all.

Born in Nice to Algerian parents, Mourad is fuelled by the desire to forge his own destiny. His retired father spends his days fixing up things in the backyard; his mother, bemoaning the loss of her natal village in North Africa. Mourad lives in fear of becoming an overweight bachelor with salt and pepper hair, living off his mother's cooking. When Mourad’s father has a stroke, he makes his son promise to reconcile things with his estranged sister Dounia, a staunch feminist and aspiring politician, who had always felt constrained living at home.

Hailed as "an unusually gifted storyteller with exceptional insight" (Jewish Tribune), Bernstein award-winning writer Sayed Kashua presents his masterful fourth novel Track Changes, which follows an Arab-Israeli man as he reckons with the weight of his past, his memories, and his cultural identity.

Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon's fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans.

Two investigations. Two impeachments. Two acquittals. One president. The full story. Unprecedented. Unimaginable. Until Donald Trump’s presidency. A year apart, two ferocious political dramas challenged American democracy. As Pulitzer Prize - winning Washington Post reporters Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan show in this gripping account, the two Trump impeachments and acquittals shared common threads: An American president, relentless in his drive to win re-election, willing to disregard the laws that limit his powers, no matter the cost.

All around the world, the words "Wall Street" conjure up a powerful image. For some, it is the center of America's capitalist system and the engine of its economic growth. For others, it is the home of rapacious bankers and reckless traders whose greed would lead to a global financial crisis. For an Indian-born blackjack player, Wall Street represented something else entirely—a chance for him to play in the largest casino in the world.

Founded centuries ago by the enigmatic genius Moses Moses, the planet Reverie can either be heaven or hell, depending on whether you live on or above it. The superrich orbit the world in luxury abodes, keeping their sometimes-lethal ennui at bay by watching homemade sex and violence videos created by the peons dwelling on the coral continents miles beneath them. The most popular entertainer of all is the Artificial Kid, an unbeatable combat artist whose bloody, self-produced martial arts videos have made him beloved both above and below.

Kashua's nameless antihero has big shoes to fill, having grown up with the myth of a grandfather who died fighting the Zionists in 1948, and with a father who was jailed for blowing up a school cafeteria in the name of freedom. When he is granted a scholarship to an elite Jewish boarding school, his family rejoices, dreaming that he will grow up to be the first Arab to build an atom bomb. But to their dismay, he turns out to be a coward devoid of any national pride.

Six hundred years ago, the author of this landmark work of history and religious thought—an esteemed judge, poet, and scholar in Cairo—survived the bubonic plague, which took the lives of three of his children, not to mention tens of millions of others throughout the medieval world.

Sayed Kashua has been praised by The New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society". An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story.

Thomas Friesen has three goals in life: get a job, make friends, and find a good book to curl up with. After landing a job at READ, the newest hypermegabookstore, he feels he may have accomplished all three. All is not peaceable within the stacks, however, as discontent steadily rises, aimed squarely at talk show host Munroe Purvis, whose wildly popular book club is progressively lowering the IQ of North America. But the bookworms have a plan - plots are being hatched and the destruction of Munroe is all but assured.