The Krampus, a folkloric devil associated with St. Nicholas in Alpine Austria and Germany, has been embraced by the American counterculture and is lately skewing mainstream. The new Christmas he seems to embody is ironically closer to an ancient understanding of the holiday as a perilous, haunted season. In the Krampus' world, witches rule Christmas, and saints can sometimes kill.
Finalist for the 2016 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators' Association The life, birth, and early years of 'the Fariyaq'—the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of ‘the Fariyaq,’ alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women’s rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European and Arabic literatures. Al-Shidyaq also celebrates the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language. Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its “obscenity,” and later editions were often abridged. This is the first English translation of the work and reproduces the original Arabic text, published under the author’s supervision in 1855.
Finalist for the 2016 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators' Association The life, birth, and early years of 'the Fariyaq'—the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of ‘the Fariyaq,’ alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women’s rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European and Arabic literatures. Al-Shidyaq also celebrates the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language. Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg Over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its “obscenity,” and later editions were often abridged. This is the first English translation of the work and reproduces the original Arabic text, published under the author’s supervision in 1855.
White and Green: Seasons of Moroccan Tea is a great book in which the reader enjoys the pleasure of narration and the events that create a background for the poets imagination, which soars with viewless wings of poesy. The novelists poetic language is distinguished because it perfectly exploits figures of speech and irony. White and Green describes a journey to Morocco, the land of a thousand and one nights. Morocco is a charming country that embodies the past and the present, different cultures, identities, wars, and variable civilizations of the Romans, the Phoenicians, and the last Islamic Arabian kingdom in Cordoba, which still governs this wondrous land rich with secrets and mystery. Green Moroccan tea is sipped in cities characterized by white houses and buildings and shaded by the beautiful Andalusian architecture that distinguishes Al-Hamra Palace in Granada and Ibn Abbad Palace in Seville. It has the delicious smell of Moroccan mint, the best mint in the whole world.
In 1986, when this autobiography opens, the author is a typical fourteen-year-old boy in Asyut in Upper Egypt. Attracted at first by the image of a radical Islamist group as "strong Muslims," his involvement develops until he finds himself deeply committed to its beliefs and implicated in its activities. This ends when, as he leaves the university following a demonstration, he is arrested. Prison, a return to life on the outside, and attending Cairo University all lead to Khaled al-Berry's eventual alienation from radical Islam. This book opens a window onto the mind of an extremist who turns out to be disarmingly like many other clever adolescents, and bears witness to a history with whose reverberations we continue to live. It also serves as an intelligent and critical guide for the reader to the movement's unfamiliar debates and preoccupations, motives and intentions. Fluently written, intellectually gripping, exciting, and often funny, Life Is More Beautiful than Paradise provides a vital key to the understanding of a world that is both a source of fear and a magnet of curiosity for the west.
In this book al-Jami examines questions that Islamic theologians, philosophers, and Sufis had long debated. On each question al-Jami first presents the views of the philosphers and theologians. He then presents the Sufi view as a clearly superior position, either because it reconciles the opposing views of the theologians and philosophers, or because it avoids problems that their doctrines entail.
The Krampus, a folkloric devil associated with St. Nicholas in Alpine Austria and Germany, has been embraced by the American counterculture and is lately skewing mainstream. The new Christmas he seems to embody is ironically closer to an ancient understanding of the holiday as a perilous, haunted season. In the Krampus' world, witches rule Christmas, and saints can sometimes kill.
A loose comic interpretation of Dante's Inferno; Al Burian places himself as protagonist, journeying through a hell based around his own personal torments at the time: work, art school, the meaning of life, grazing in the bulk bins at Safeway, the endless pontificating on literary criticism, and the concept of making a college thesis about making a college thesis. The big question being "is marking up pieces of paper expressing something that 'was' in the artist or just marking up pieces of paper?
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