Autocar

Autocar
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2003
Genre: Automobiles
ISBN:

Return

Return
Author: Ghada Karmi
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2015-05-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1781688443

An extraordinary memoir of exile and the impossibility of finding home, from the author of In Search of Fatima “The journey filled me with bitterness and grief. I remember looking down on a nighttime Tel Aviv from the windows of a place taking me back to London and thinking hopelessly, ‘flotsam and jetsam, that’s what we’ve become, scattered and divided. There’s no room for us or our memories here. And it won’t be reversed.’” Having grown up in Britain following her family’s exile from Palestine, doctor, author and academic Ghada Karmi leaves her adoptive home in a quest to return to her homeland. She starts work with the Palestinian Authority and gets a firsthand understanding of its bizarre bureaucracy under Israel’s occupation. In her quest, she takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the heart of one of the world’s most intractable conflict zones and one of the major issues of our time. Visiting places she has not seen since childhood, her unique insights reveal a militarised and barely recognisable homeland, and her home in Jerusalem, like much of the West Bank, occupied by strangers. Her encounters with politicians, fellow Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers cause her to question what role exiles like her have in the future of their country and whether return is truly possible.

Stranger to History

Stranger to History
Author: Aatish Taseer
Publisher: Emblem Editions
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2010-04-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1551993635

As a child, all Aatish Taseer ever had of his father was his photograph in a browning silver frame. Raised by his Sikh mother in Delhi, his Pakistani father remained a distant figure, almost a figment of his imagination, until Aatish crossed the border when he was twenty-one to finally meet him. In the years that followed, the relationship between father and son revived, then fell apart. For Aatish, their tension had not just to do with the tensions of a son rediscovering his absent father — they were intensified by the fact that Aatish was Indian, his father Pakistani and Muslim. It had complicated his parents’ relationship; now it complicated his. The relationship forced Aatish to ask larger questions: Why did being Muslim mean that your allegiances went out to other Muslims before the citizens of your own country? Why did his father, despite claiming to be irreligious, describe himself as a ‘cultural Muslim’? Why did Muslims see modernity as a threat? What made Islam a trump identity? Stranger to History is the story of the journey Aatish made to answer these questions — starting from Istanbul, Islam’s once greatest city, to Mecca, its most holy, and then home, through Iran and Pakistan. Ending in Lahore, at his estranged father’s home, on the night Benazir Bhutto was killed, it is also the story of Aatish’s own divided family over the past fifty years. Part memoir, part travelogue, probing, stylish and troubling, Stranger to History is an outstanding debut. ‘I had sought out my father because I couldn't live with the darkness of not knowing him. If I hadn't, all my life I would have had to cover it up with some idea of him taken from my mother on faith. I felt it would have limited me. History should never be taken on faith.’

Papering Over the Cracks

Papering Over the Cracks
Author: Colin Murray
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Christian biography
ISBN: 1848764022

Do you yearn to find the real meaning to life or an inner peace that is true? Are you fed up with wearing a mask? Is life really getting you down? That is exactly where Colin Murray was just a few years ago. He invites you to travel with him through his life while he paints a vivid picture, reflecting on his childhood in Scotland, describing his happy, at times haphazard, life in the North East coastal town of Portsoy. He shares his experiences, going beyond the ‘safety’ of home, in search of personal fulfilment. You will witness him wearing an assortment of stereotypical hats: the hat of the wise-cracking bar fly, the guilt-ridden wrongdoer, the compulsive business builder, passionate protagonist, and even the wronged dupe. He admits that attempting to explain his personal quest for the truth has been extremely difficult, because so much of his journey involves those mystical inner feelings that lie beyond the horizon of words.The complicated paths and winding roads we follow are vast and varied, but we all reach a time in our lives when we want to know, at the deepest level, if our existence and our Soul are compatible. This book simply chronicles the quest for this fundamental truth.

The Scent of Secrets

The Scent of Secrets
Author: Jane Thynne
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 055339391X

Set in Europe, in 1938, during the tense run-up to war, and perfect for fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd, Robert Harris, and Susan Elia MacNeal, this gripping historical novel features the half-British, half-German actress (and wholly covert spy) Clara Vine, who finds herself enmeshed in a dangerous game of subterfuge. The colorful, lively streets of Paris come as a welcome relief to Clara Vine after the dour countenance of Berlin, where bunkers and bomb shelters are being dug, soldiers march the streets in their high boots, and Jewish residents rush to make it home before curfew. Though Clara is in Paris to make a film, her true work is never far from her mind. Approached by a British intelligence officer, Clara is initially confounded by his request: Get close to Eva Braun and glean as much as she can about the Führer’s plans and intentions. Clara has already established friendships with several high-ranking Nazi wives, but Eva Braun is another matter altogether. Hitler keeps his “secret” girlfriend obsessively hidden, fiercely guarding their relationship as well as Eva’s delicate psychological state. From the gilded halls of the decadent City of Light to the cobbled, quaint streets of Munich, and even to the chilling, rarefied air of the Berghof, Hitler’s private mountaintop retreat, Clara flirts with discovery at every turn—and a dangerous, devious plot unfolds. Previously published in the U.K. as A War of Flowers “A brilliant tale of spies and secrets, of intense psychological drama, of edgy climax and one extraordinary heroine.”—Beatriz Williams, New York Times bestselling author of A Hundred Summers “A compelling story of love and betrayal in Hitler’s Berlin . . . Peppered with real-life characters, this series offers a fascinating glimpse of the extraordinary world of the Nazi wives.”—Daisy Goodwin, author of The American Heiress “An alluring blend of thrills, suspense, historic detail, and seduction.”—Susan Elia MacNeal, author of the Maggie Hope series “An extraordinary, absorbing read with an array of characters so real you’re there with them as war looms, and a pace that sweeps you from page to page. This is indeed a winner!”—Charles Todd, author of Inspector Ian Rutledge Mysteries Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.

Medusa

Medusa
Author: Michael Dibdin
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2010-08-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385672446

Michael Dibdin’s veteran Italian police officer is back. The newest addition to this remarkable series -- consistently galvanizing as much for its revelation of the subtle complexities of Italian life as for its page-turning suspense -- is a novel of long-held secrets set against a sweeping background of political and passionate intrigue. When a group of Austrian cavers exploring a network of abandoned military tunnels in the Italian Alps comes across human remains at the bottom of a deep shaft, everyone assumes the death was accidental. Until, that is, the still-unidentified body is stolen from the morgue and the Defense Ministry puts a news blackout on the case. And is the recent car bombing in Campione D’Italia, a tiny tax haven surrounded on all sides by Switzerland, somehow related? The whole affair has the whiff of political corruption. That’s enough to interest Aurelio Zen’s boss at the Interior Ministry, who wants to know who is hiding what from whom, and why. The search for the truth leads Zen back into the murky history of postwar Italy and the obscure corners of modern-day society to uncover the truth about a crime that everyone thought was as dead and buried as its victim.