Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Mistress of Spices: A Novel

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo--in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman--travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a... (more)

Women of Sand and Myrrh: A Novel

by H?ana?n Shaykh, Catherine Cobham

Little is known of what life is like for contemporary Arab women living in the Middle East. One of the few literary voices speaking out from that still closed society is Hanan al-Shaykh, whose novel The Story of Zahra was banned in most Arab countries. Now available for the first time in the U.S. is her newest novel, a story of four women treated to every luxury but freedom.

The Persian Bride: A Novel

by James Buchan

At once a great love story, a riveting political thriller, and a profound analysis of modern Iran, THE PERSIAN BRIDE is unflinching in its vision of twentieth-century chaos. In 1974, the young Englishman John Pitt follows the hippie trail to Isfahan, where he encounters the enchanting Shirin Farameh. These two young people fall desperately in love and marry, despite their cultural differences and the political... (more)

The Space Between Us: A Novel

by Thrity N. Umrigar

Poignant, evocative, and unforgettable, The Space Between Us is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in modern-day India, it is the story of two compelling and achingly real women: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, who... (more)

A Thousand Splendid Suns

by Khaled Hosseini

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an... (more)

Bru?le?e vive. (English)

by Souad

Souad was a 17-year-old woman living in a small village in Jordan when she made the mistake of falling in love--an event that would lead to unspeakable acts of violence and a lifetime of exile from her homeland. Desperate to leave her abusive childhood behind, Souad begins a relationship with a neighbor--one that would leave her pregnant, and her family shamed. Now, Souad faces the only punishment her society... (more)

Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World, Newly updated

Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World, Newly updated

by Jan Goodwin

A look at the treatment of Muslim women in the Islamic world describes the increasing repressive politics that govern their personal lives and how they are confined, isolated, and even killed to protect ""male honor."" 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

Ladies Coupe

by Anita Nair

Meet Akhila: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider - until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her... (more)

The Bathhouse

by Farnoosh Moshiri

With intense emotion and great literary skill, Farnoosh Moshiri has written one of the most moving novels to come out in years. The story begins with the arrest of a seventeen-year-old girl in the early days of the fundamentalist revolution in Iran. Imprisoned because of her brother"s involvement with leftist politics, she is placed in a makeshift jail, a former bathhouse, in which other women are held captive.... (more)

Storyteller's Daughter

by Saira Shah

Imagine that a jewel-like garden overlooking Kabul is your ancestral home. Imagine a kitchen made fragrant with saffron strands and cardamom pods simmering in an authentic pilau. Now remember that you were born in London, your family in exile, and that you have never seen Afghanistan in peacetime. These are but the starting points of Saira Shah’s memoir, by turns inevitably exotic and unavoidably heartbreaking,... (more)

Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman's Journey Toward Independence (CMES Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman's Journey Toward Independence (CMES Modern Middle East Literature in Translation)

by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, Layla? Abu? Zayd

Several of this Moroccan writer's short stories are gathered here, along with the title novella, which examines the Moroccan struggle for independence through the eyes of a working-class woman.

The Book of Trouble: A Romance

by Ann Marlowe

She's a forty-four-year-old writer with a bohemian past, and he's a preppy engineer ten years younger. She's a Jewish New Yorker fascinated by his country's traditional family compound life; he's a devout Muslim who loves partying, Western-style. Both are passionate, but each keeps love and sex apart. She follows desire rather than convention; he insists he wants an arranged marriage. When he speaks of "making... (more)

The politics of benefit-cost analysis (Brookings general series reprint)

The politics of benefit-cost analysis (Brookings general series reprint)

by Kirin Narayan

Gita, a shy Indian graduate student studying at Berkeley, is assured by her beloved Aunty that she will meet her Mr. Right in Chaitra 2040--March 1984--and several intriguing males materialize, but none of them seems quite right. Reprint.

The Vine of Desire: A Novel

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

THE VINE OF DESIRE is the story of Anju and Sudha, two young women far from Calcutta, the city of their childhood, and who after a year of living separate lives are rekindling their friendship in America. The deep-seated love they feel for each other provides the support each of them needs. It gives Anju the strength to pick up the pieces of her life after a miscarriage, and Sudha the confidence to make a life for... (more)

Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny : Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam

Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny : Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam

by Zainab Salbi

Zainab Salbi was eleven years old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle."

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam are threatened with death, and Muslim women who escape the virgins' cage are branded whores. So asserts Ayaan Hirsi Ali's profound meditation on Islam and the role of women, the rights of the individual, the roots of fanaticism, and Western policies toward Islamic countries and immigrant communities. Hard-hitting, outspoken, and controversial, The Caged... (more)

The Prophet of Zongo Street: Stories

by Mohammed Ali

A dazzling collection of stories, The Prophet of Zongo Street takes readers to a world that seamlessly blends African folklore and myths with modernity. Set primarily on Zongo Street, a fictitious community in West Africa, the stories -- which are reminiscent of the works of Ben Okri and Amos Tutuola -- introduce us to wonderfully quirky characters and the most uproarious, poignant, and rawest moments of life.... (more)

Three Cups of Tea

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain... (more)

My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban - A Young Woman's Story

My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban - A Young Woman's Story

by Latifa

Born into a middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980, Latifa had a conventional childhood. Then, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. And from that moment, Latifa, just sixteen, became a prisoner in her own home. The simplest and most basic freedoms were forbidden. She was forced to put on a chadri, the state-mandated uniform that covered her entire body. Disbelief at having to hide herself was soon replaced... (more)

Reading "Lolita" in Tehran

by Azar Nafisi

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; some had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: middle eastern lit

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

by H?ana?n Shaykh, Catherine Cobham

by James Buchan

by Thrity N. Umrigar

by Khaled Hosseini

by Souad

by Jan Goodwin

by Anita Nair

by Farnoosh Moshiri

by Saira Shah

by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, Layla? Abu? Zayd

by Ann Marlowe

by Kirin Narayan

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

by Zainab Salbi

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

by Mohammed Ali

One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations... One School at a Time

by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin

by Latifa

by Azar Nafisi