Vénus Khoury-Ghata Bücher

The year is 1938. The great Russian poet and essayist Osip Mandelstam is forty-seven years old and is dying in a transit camp near Vladivostok after having been arrested by Stalin's government during the repression of the 1930s and sent into exile with his wife. Stalin, "the Kremlin mountaineer, murderer, and peasant-slayer," is undoubtedly responsible for his fatal decline. From the depths of his prison cell, lost in a world full of ghosts, Mandelstam sees scenes from his life pass before him: constant hunger, living hand to mouth, relying on the assistance of sympathetic friends, shunned by others, four decades of creation and struggle, alongside his beloved wife Nadezhda, and his contemporaries Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, and many others. With her sensitive prose and innate sense of drama, French-Lebanese writer V nus Khoury-Ghata brings Mandelstam back to life and allows him to have the last word--proving that literature is one of the surest means to fight against barbarism.

A biographic novel that captures the tempestuous and moving life of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. The life of Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) coincided with turbulent years in Russian history. She was an eminent Russian poet and a passionate lover involved with several men at the same time, including Rilke, who chose Lou Andreas-Salomé over her, and Pasternak, who married someone else, but protected her until her death. Her life included many trials such as her poverty during the grueling Russian civil war, her young daughter's death from hunger in an orphanage, and the death of her husband, who fought against the Communist regime and was executed by the Soviet state. Rejected by official poets, then by the wealthy Russian diaspora in France, she finally returned to her country to end her wandering life. She hanged herself from a rope in an attic from which she could see the field where she had dug with bare hands for potatoes abandoned by local farmers. A poet-martyr of the Stalinist era--buried in an unmarked plot in the cemetery of Yelabuga--Tsvetaeva is brought to life in this poetic biographical novel by celebrated Lebanese author Vénus Khoury-Ghata.

A lyrical novel concerning belonging, foreignness, and ethnicity. Following the path of her late geneticist husband, Laure arrives in the town of Malaterra in the harsh mountains of Abruzzo in Italy, where her husband was studying the close-knit Albanian inhabitants. At first an intruder, she is gradually accepted by the population, which is made up of amusing, eccentric characters. Among them: Helena, who hanged her dishonored daughter from the fig tree in her garden, and who has been waiting for thirty years with her gun for her daughter's rapist to return; the Kosovar, a distrusted bookseller languishing in his dusty shop; Mourad, the baker, who proposes marriage to Laure and every other woman who enters his bakery; and Yussuf, the postman, who makes his rounds even if there is no mail to deliver. We also meet the unfortunate assailant who returns from his exile to reclaim and restore his family home. With humor and compassion, this book brings to life the inhabitants of a small, remote town in the mountains of Abruzzo.

V malé vesnici na okraji pouště se odehrává příběh Noor, jenž je jednoho dne znásilněna cizincem. Otěhotní a má být ukamenována za cizoložství. Celá vesnice je k jejímu osudu naprosto lhostejná. Její obyvatelé mají jiné zájmy, než lidé z měst. Nebojují o moc a bohatství. Bojují proti písku, který napadá jejich chatrče, suchu a horkému větru ze Sahary. Pouze Francouzka, humanitární pracovnice, jež odešla z Paříže, aby unikla své osamělosti, žalu a milostnému životu v troskách, se snaží Noor zachránit a požádá o milost náboženské vůdce. Pokusí se o nemožné. Poprosí nejvyššího představeného, aby trest odložil alespoň do doby, než Noor porodí dítě, které čeká… Skvělá vypravěčka Vénus Khoury-Ghata nastiňuje portréty žen s odlišným pohledem na svět, žen s tragickým osudem, zmítajících se mezi úctou k tradicím, touhou po svobodě a právem na lásku a rozkoš.

En septembre 2000, pour la première fois, tous les Etats membres des Nations unies se sont engagés à réaliser un projet commun pour s'attaquer à la fatalité de la misère. Ils ont adopté huit objectifs ambitieux et réalistes qui visent à, combattre la faim et la pauvreté, à préserver l'environnement, à améliorer l'accès à l'éducation et a la santé, à promouvoir l'égalité des sexes, et à mettre en place un partenariat mondial d'ici à 2015. Dans les huit nouvelles inédites qui composent ce recueil, on croise une réalisatrice de documentaires qui découvre le quotidien des Haïtiens, un garçon rwandais qui rêve d'aller à l'école refoulé aux portes de l'Europe, une jeune fille arpentant les trottoirs de Ramana, un marchand de tamis qui se bat pour la survie de ses enfants au Mali, une fille mère en danger de mort au Liban, un Européen confronté à la maladie dans un pays lointain, un producteur aux prises avec les cadavres de ses ancêtres dans le Sud de la France, un conférencier des Nations unies interpellé par les habitants d'une grande ville du Congo... Avec humour, gravité, tendresse et lucidité, Zoé Valdés, Björn Larsson, Taslima Nasreen, Moussa Konaté, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Philippe Besson, Simonetta Greggio et Alain Mabanckou brossent les portraits de femmes, d'hommes et d'enfants qui mettent en lumière l'urgente nécessité d'agir pour un nouveau modèle de développement.