Category Archives: ALIF

New Arrivals at ALC-ALIF Bookstore

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Title: Coping with Uncertainty: Youth in the Middle East and North Africa
Author: Jörg Gertel (Editor), Ralf Hexel (Editor)
Seven years after the Arab uprisings, the social situation has deteriorated across the Middle East and North Africa. Political, economic and personal insecurities have expanded and, against a backdrop of escalating armed conflicts and disintegrating state structures, many have been forced from their homes, creating millions of internally displaced persons and refugees. Young people are often the ones hit hardest by the turmoil. How do they cope with these ongoing uncertainties, and what drives them to pursue their own dreams, in spite of these hardships?

This landmark volume offers the most in-depth, comprehensive study on young people in the Arab world to date. In 2016 and 2017, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers conducted interviews with nine thousand young people aged 16–30 from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Given how rapidly events have moved in the Middle East and North Africa, their findings, which are drawn together in this volume, are in many regards unexpected.

Title: Classical Poems by Arab Women: A Bilingual Anthology
Author: by Abdullah al-Udhari , Laura Maggi (Illustrator)
Arab women poets have been around since the earliest of times, yet their diwans (collected poems) were not given the same consideration as their male counterparts’.
Spanning 7,000 years, from the pre-Islamic to the Andalusian periods, Classical Poems by Arab Women presents rarely seen work by over fifty women writers for the first time. From the sorrowful eulogies of Khansa to the gleeful scorn of Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, this collection exclusively features the work of Arab women who boldly refused to be silenced. The poems are excursions into their vibrant world whose humanity has been suppressed for centuries by religious and political bigotry.
With poems in both English and Arabic, this remarkable anthology celebrates feminine wit and desire, and shows the significant contribution Arab women made to the literary tradition.

Title: The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad
Author: Tariq Ramadan
The life of the Prophet Muhammad, to whom the Angel Gabriel revealed the verses of the Quran, has provided inspiration to Muslims for hundreds of years.
Interspersed with spiritual and philosophical meditations, this profound and stimulating biography shows how Muhammad’s message can be used to address some of today’s most controversial issues – from the treatment of the poor and the role of women to the interpretation of jihad and relations with other religions. It offers Muslims a new understanding of Muhammad’s life and introduces non-Muslims to the story of the Prophet and to the riches of Islam.

 

Title: The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write
Author: Sabrina Mahfouz
From established literary heavyweights to emerging spoken word artists, the writers in this ground-breaking collection blow away the narrow image of the ‘Muslim Woman’.
Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride. Among stories of honour killings and ill-fated love in besieged locations, we also find heart-warming connections and powerful challenges to the status quo.
From Algiers to Brighton, these stories transcend time and place revealing just how varied the search for belonging can be. Alongside renowned authors such as Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Soueif and Leila Aboulela are emerging voices, published here for the first time.

Title: Does My Head Look Big in This?
Author: Randa Abdel-Fattah

When sixteen-year-old Amal decides to wear the hijab full-time, her entire world changes, all because of a piece of cloth…
Sixteen-year-old Amal makes the decision to start wearing the hijab full-time and everyone has a reaction. Her parents, her teachers, her friends, people on the street. But she stands by her decision to embrace her faith and all that it is, even if it does make her a little different from everyone else.
Can she handle the taunts of “towel head,” the prejudice of her classmates, and still attract the cutest boy in school? Brilliantly funny and poignant, Randa Abdel-Fattah’s debut novel will strike a chord in all teenage readers, no matter what their beliefs.

Paul Bowles: A Musical Portrait

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Paul Bowles: A Musical Portrait
by Irene Herrmann (piano) & Carole Blankenship (voice)
Monday, March 4 at 7 PM
ALIF Riad, 6 Derb Drissi, Batha

Irene Herrmann and Carole Blankenship present a music/spoken word concert of Paul Bowles’ music that includes solo piano, songs, storytelling, and readings from Bowles’ writings.

Irene Herrmann, accompanist at the University of California Santa Cruz, is executor of the Paul Bowles Music Estate. Her musical acquaintance with Bowles began in 1992 with a visit to the composer in Tangier. It quickly grew into a lively friendship of discussing, editing, disseminating, and performing his music. Her CD of Bowles’ music includes chamber music, solo and duo piano works and features several performance premieres. Her recitals often use the lecture/performance format, replete with Bowles anecdotes, personal insights into his music, and readings from his essays and works of fiction. The collaborations include vocalists who perform songs from Bowles’ prolific output in the genre of American art song and highlight his musical friendships with Tennessee Williams, Gertrude Stein, and William Saroyan.

Carole Blankenship, soprano, is Associate Professor of Music and Elizabeth G. Daughdrill Chair in the Fine Arts at Rhodes College. She is heard regularly in recitals, chamber music concerts, and oratorio performances. In October 2010, she presented a paper for the International Paul Bowles Conference at the University of Lisbon, Portugal and has presented lecture recitals on his works recently in Brisbane, Australia and in the U.S. With Irene Herrmann she co-edited two sets of songs by Paul Bowles for Classical Vocal Reprints.

This concert, organized by the ALC-ALIF Music Club and Book Club, is free and open to the general public.