My name is not Omar Nasiri—or at least that is not the name my parents gave me. It is the name I am using to write this book, but it is only one of a long line of names I have used over the course of my life. Or perhaps I should say my lives—as a son, a brother, a student, a gun-runner, a mujahid, a secret agent, a civilian, a husband, and now an author…
Between 1994 and 2000, Omar Nasiri worked as a secret agent for Europe’s top foreign intelligence services. From the netherworld of Islamist cells in Belgium to the training camps of Afghanistan to the radical mosques of London,
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“I finally understand what the poets have written. In spring, moved to passion; in autumn only regret.”
For young Peony, betrothed to a suitor she has never met, these lyrics from The Peony Pavilion mirror her own longings. In the garden of the Chen Family Villa, amid the scent of ginger, green tea, and jasmine, a small theatrical troupe is performing scenes from this epic opera, a live spectacle few females have ever seen. Like the heroine in the drama, Peony is the cloistered daughter of a wealthy family, trapped like a good-luck cricket in a bamboo-and-lacquer cage.
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In The Bastard of Istanbul, her second novel to be written in English, Turkish author Elif Shafak confronts her country’s poignant past in a vivid and colorful tale about the tangled history of two families—one Turkish and one Armenian American. Shafak has created an intricately woven tale about the very different but equally difficult struggles of living with the past and trying to survive without one. Full of bold, unforgettable characters, The Bastard of Istanbul reveals that even the worst events are important ingredients in the recipes that make each of us who we are.
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Luncheon of the Boating Party, the novel and the painting, depicts the summer of 1880, an exuberant postwar time when social constraints were loosening, Paris was healing, and Parisians were bursting with a desire for pleasure. The fourteen painted figures on the terrace overlooking the Seine enjoying this moment of la vie moderne are Renoir’s very real friends, whose lives unfold and connect during the course of the making of the painting. Seven of the models are viewpoint characters who reveal in their own voices the events of their lives during the weeks in between painting sessions.
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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 incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.
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The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner tells a sweeping story of family, love, and friendship against a backdrop of history that has not been told in fiction before,
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