Vénus KhouryGhata Boeken

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.

The book features a powerful translation of poems by a prolific Lebanese writer who navigates both Arabic and French cultures. The translator, Hacker, captures the intimate and enigmatic essence of Khoury-Ghata's voice, showcasing the poet's distinctive perspective and artistry. Through this work, readers are invited to explore the rich interplay of cultural influences that shape the poet's expression.

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.

In Khouf, a city on the windswept fringes of the Sahel desert, a woman named Noor has been sentenced to death for adultery. To the religious authorities, it makes no difference that she was actually raped. The stones that will wash away the family's dishonour in blood are ready in a pile in the village square. Only forty days to go. Confronted with Noor's resignation at her misguided fate, a French charity worker whose own life has begun to unravel, decides to take on Noor's plight and fights to have the fatwa reversed, creating a powerful bond between the two women, one that transcends culture and religion.

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.

In the city of Beirut, five shabby dwellings circle a courtyard with a pomegranate tree weeping blood red fruit. The residents hear screams in the night as a boy is tossed out into the street by his father―a punishment for masturbating in his sleep. A crime not worthy of the the neighbors gossip and decide that he must have tried to rape his sisters. "Small-boned with long, silky lashes, no one but the devil could camouflage evil so seductively." The poems he writes are perhaps an even greater crime to his father, but ultimately a gift to his eldest sister, who narrates their story with a combination of brutal truth and stunning prose. As her brother becomes more and more lost to his family and to himself, we also learn of a Contessa who teaches tango, a family who spends every Sunday in search of buried treasure, and the miracle of a weeping Madonna statue that cries when human tears run dry. In the harrowing and mesmerizing novel A House at the Edge of Tears , celebrated novelist and poet, Khoury-Ghata, presents the disintegration of a family and a country―both ruled by a fury fueled by fear.

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.