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

Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father's wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise.

The audio edition of On the Grand Trunk Road is finally available, revised and updated with new material. Focusing on Coll's journeys in conflict-ridden India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan as a bureau chief for The Washington Post, On the Grand Trunk Road reveals a little-seen area of the world where violence, corruption, and greed have had devastating effects on South Asians from all walks of life.

The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning - but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.

This is the story of how Darjeeling tea began, was key to the largest tea industry on the globe under imperial British rule, and came to produce the highest-quality tea leaves anywhere in the world. It is a story rich in history, intrigue, and empire, full of adventurers and unlikely successes in culture, mythology and religions, ecology and terroir, all set with a backdrop of the looming Himalayas and drenching monsoons.

Part philosophy, part business, and part history, this book is a kaleidoscopic view of the way humans have been able to achieve greatness for themselves, their organizations, and the world at large. You'll learn from the wisdom of Eastern philosophies that are over 2,500 years old and the interconnected insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Couple that with Fortune 100 corporate cross pollination for creativity and startup thinking for how to adapt with ease, and you have Everything Connects. This isn't just a quick fix for your next quarter; this is how you succeed in the long run.

Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

MediMiracle Corporation manufactures Sophrosyne, a miracle cure for opiate addiction. Ellison Ricard, a research-analyst for the company, claims to have uncovered data that proves Black users of Sophrosyne experience fatal side effects far more often than people of other races. When Ricard confronts MediMiracle’s charismatic founder and CEO, Peyton Burke, a violent confrontation ensues. The wheelchair bound Ricard—a Black man himself, severely injured years earlier—is fired that very day.

Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of the aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty, that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian—no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness.

Children of the Stone chronicles Ramzi's journey - from stone thrower to music student to school founder - and shows how through his love of music he created something lasting and beautiful in a land torn by violence and war. This is a story about the power of music, but also about freedom and conflict, determination and vision.

If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.

Georges Sada was one of Saddam's top generals and foremost military advisors. A truth-teller in a government that made the truth dangerous. A devout Christian in a Muslim country. And a man who would stand up for what was right—even at the risk of his own life. In this eye-opening exposé, General Sada shares his bizarre yet amazing journey as an insider to one of history's most sinister regimes.

In the summer of 1916, Private Daniel Baker marches into battle with the boys of Nova Scotia's 25th Battalion. Out of brutal necessity, Danny has steeled himself against the trials and horrors of war, but he is completely unprepared to meet the love of his life in war-torn France. Audrey Poulin has the soul of an artist. She lives alone with her grandmother in the quiet French countryside, where her only joy is in her brush and palette. When by chance she encounters Danny, the handsome young soldier captures her heart and inspires her painting.

In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family. Powerful and fascinating, The Bruising of Qilwa is the newest arrival in the era of fantasy classics such as the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Four Profound Weaves, and Who Fears Death.

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.

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.

Indelbed is a lonely kid living in a crumbling mansion in the super-dense, super-chaotic third-world capital of Bangladesh. His father, Dr. Kaikobad, is the black sheep of their clan. A drunken loutish widower, he refuses to allow Indelbed go to school, and the only thing Indelbed knows about his mother is the official cause of her early demise: "Death by Indelbed". But when Dr. Kaikobad falls into a supernatural coma, Indelbed and his older cousin, the wise-cracking slacker Rais, learn that Indelbed's dad was in fact a magician - and a trusted emissary to the djinn world.

Vincent van Gogh’s paintings look utterly unique - his vivid palette and boldly interpretive portraits are unmistakably his. Yet however revolutionary his style may have been, it was actually built on a strong foundation of paintings by other artists, both his contemporaries and those who came before him. Now, drawing on Van Gogh’s own thoughtful and often profound comments about the painters he venerated, Steven Naifeh gives a gripping account of the artist’s deep engagement with their work.

Welcome to Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2089. A city notorious for its extreme population density has found an unexpected way to not just survive a global climate apocalypse, but thrive: pump enough biological nanotech into the neighborhood and all of the bodies together form a self-sustaining, and even temperate, microclimate. Certain people no longer need food or water, while others can live without functioning organs. So the mercenary Djibrel has to carry a machete wherever he goes. What Djibrel doesn’t know is that his every move is being tracked by the infamous Cyber Mage.

The Vita nuova is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems interspersed with his own prose commentary. The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their first meeting at a May Day party in her father's house, through Dante's sufferings and his attempts to conceal the true object of his devotion by the use of "screen-loves", to his overwhelming grief at her death, ending with the transformative vision of her in heaven.

Drive-by shootings, drug overdoses, and multi-car accidents—as a paramedic, he thought he had seen it all, until he answered a small job advertisement that changed his life forever. Welcome to the mysterious world of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the most fundamentalist Islamic countries on the globe. Working as a paramedic at the only level one trauma center in the Middle East, he found his skills and knowledge tested to the limit on a daily basis.