Middle World

Dr. Wendy Elisheva Somerson, PhD, shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies—and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging. This unmetabolized trauma can lock us into a survival state that brings historical grief into the present moment…and keep us from exploring critical questions that help us tend our legacies and live into a better world.

وطننا العربي يقع في خانة أكتر الشعوب عجزاً عن ملاحقة مسيرة الحضارة، وهو موقع لا مبرر للشكوي منه، سوي أن الحضارة يأسرها ولدت أصلاً في وطننا، وأن السفن والأسلحة التي ارتاد بها الأروبيون قارات العالم الجديد كانت في أيدينا، قبل أن يعرفها الأوربيون بثلاثة قرون علي الأقل

كلُّ من عاشَ في الدَّار يصيرُ من أهلها؛ حمامُ الدَّار لا يغيب وأفعى الدَّار لا تخون، هذا ما قالتهُ لي بصيرة قبلَ سنتين من يومِنا ذاك، جدَّةُ والدي، أو رُبَّما جدَّةُ جدَّتِه، لا أدري فهي قديمةٌ جدًا، أزليَّة، ساكنةٌ في زاويةِ بهو البيت العربي القديم، ملتحِفةً سوادَها أسفلَ السُّلَّم. لماذا أسفلَ السُّلَّم؟ لم أسأل نفسي يومًا عن مواضع أشياءٍ اعتدتُها مُنذ مولدي، في بيتٍ عربيٍّ تطلُّ حُجُراته الضيِّقة على بهوٍ داخلي غير مسقوف، بهو بصيرة التي لم أرَها تفتحُ عينيها يومًا، كأنما خِيطَ جفناها برموشها منذ الأزل.

يونس الخطَّاط، بطل رواية "هنا الوردة"، الذي يبتلعه الحوت المجازي، شخصيَّة مثيرة للإعجاب، فهو مزيج من العاشق، والمتمرِّد، والمغامر، والحالم الذي يمشي إلى هدفه الكبير جارَّاً معه سائر شخصيَّات الرواية التي ترى حقيقة يونس بينما يبقى هو الوحيد الذي لا يرى ذاته لأنه، ببساطة، دون كيشوت العربي.

هذه الرواية تعتبر عملا ابداعيا رائعا يتميز بحيوية السرد ، فتجذبك من صفحاتها الأولى ببساطة مدهشة لتستغرق فى عالم مترابط من الشخصيات النابضة القريبة، اذ تقدم الكاتبة لوحة اجتماعية شديدة التشابك والكثافة ، تكتشف وتحرك الحياة الاجتماعية المصرية منذ خمسينيات القرن الماضى وحتى العقد الأول من القرن الحالى، وتصهر ثقافات الأولياء والمتصوفة مع عالم الحكمة والفلسفة اليونانية والغناء والحكى مع حضارات التبت ووصفات السحر الشعبي ،تلك العوالم التى من خلال تفاصيلها تقودك إلى فلسفة الطبيعة الإنسانية الممزوجة حتما ما بين عالم الروحانيات وأرض الواقع .. ما بين المتمنى والنجاح

The novelist Amir Taj Al-Sir presents us with his new novel entitled French Perfume. It is the story of many people whom we can see in our daily lives, all of whom dream of a better tomorrow, but in their lives they have nothing but monotony, stagnation, pain and regret, and with it they lose hope in a bright tomorrow and turn into forgotten and erased characters.

"إن تجربة الشاعر والروائي العماني زهران القاسمي تقوم على تبادلات متعددة، فهو نموذج للمبدع المتعدد الأوجه، بائع العسل. هذا اسم زهران القاسمي وليس وصفه! رحلات عديدة للبحث عن عسل الجبال، عن الروح في وجودها الصافي، في طبيعتها الأولى، وعن ما يشبه كل واحد منها الآخر فيه.

أنا عائشة.

سأموتُ خلال سبعةِ أيّام.

وحتى ذلك الحين قرّرتُ أن أكتب

Naila’s conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up - but they will choose her husband. Following their cultural tradition, they will plan an arranged marriage for her. And until then, dating - even friendship with a boy - is forbidden. When Naila breaks their rule by falling in love with Saif, her parents are livid.

Ten years after an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, cries of "Benghazi!" still echo across America. But instead of a landmark event to be taken seriously, it has become a punchline, an empty word, or a code for controversy and political theatre. In this thrilling retelling, Ethan Chorin reveals Benghazi as a watershed moment in American history, one that helped create the world America lives in today: polarized, fearful, and dangerously unstable.

En los preludios de la Primera Guerra Mundial, en pleno apogeo del colonialismo europeo, un agente del Gobierno británico se interna en la península arábiga con la finalidad de subyugar una inminente rebelión anticolonial. El emisario es cuestión recorre, bajo un sol abrasador, amplias regiones desérticas. Trata con los enemigos del Imperio Británico y se gana su confianza. Se convierte en uno de ellos... y actúa de forma subrepticia a favor de los intereses de la metrópli, aunque le repugna tanto ejercer ese papel que acaba simpatizando con la causa árabe.

Beim Einloggen in die WELT fliehen Startum Eisenwolf und seine Freunde gerade noch rechtzeitig aus Palnisdale vor den nördlichen Invasoren. Ihre einzige Chance zu überleben besteht darin, der Orkhorde irgendwie lange genug vorauszueilen, um die Schiffe erreichen zu können, die in Darom auf sie warten. Ein nahezu unmögliches Vorhaben, da die Hafenstadt fast zwei Tagesmärsche entfernt ist. Irgendwie muss Startum einen Weg finden, das Unmögliche zu vollbringen oder er wird alles verlieren.

It is the year 1915, and the British and Ottoman Empires clash in a deadly struggle in the Middle East. Tasked with keeping the Ottomans out of Suez Canal, Major Andrew Selkirk discovers that his real assignment is to retrieve a Bengali spy working for those who vow to see British rule out of India. After landing on the west coast of Palestine, Selkirk discovers the Ottomans have taken the spy captive. Even more troubling are the plans by Ottomans and Germans to draw Afghanistan and Persia into the war against Great Britain.

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early second century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down. Little is known of this period of British history, but soon the Anglo-Saxons showed up and began to settle the land, creating a patchwork of little kingdoms and starting a new era of British history.

Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be "the other", this groundbreaking anthology contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, Iraq + 100 is also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future.

Being able to detect black magic isnt all tea and crumpetsand for Theodosia Throckmorton, it can be a decidedly tricky business! When Sticky Will drags Theo to a magic show featuring the Great Awi Bubu, she quickly senses there is more to the magician than he lets on, setting in motion a chain of events she never could have bargained for.

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?

During 1915 to 1923, one and a half million Armenian people were deported and killed in the most appalling ways comprehensible. They were ripped from their homes (in a land where they had lived for longer than history can tell, a land so old that many speculate it was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden) and sent off on death marches across the blistering Syrian Desert. They were shot on the thresholds of the houses where they were raising their children. They were butchered with swords in gruesome ways in order to dishearten those left alive.

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

Ancient Iran: Cosmology, Mythology, History presents Iran's pre-Islamic history within the context of both its complex cosmology and rich mythology. The audiobook uses the concept of farr to show how authority, finding guidance in the cosmic realm, organized the lives of Iran's hero-saints in the mythic realm. It also discusses how historical monarchs organized their hierarchical societies according to the dictates of Ahura Mazda.