Gun Island
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A spellbinding, globe-trotting novel by the bestselling author of the Ibis trilogy






A spellbinding, globe-trotting novel by the bestselling author of the Ibis trilogy
Mrs Ramsey has gathered her friends and family around her in the family's summer house on the Isle of Skye. As the children play and the adults paint, talk and think, the relationships between them develop and change.Can true happiness ever be achieved or is it destined to exist only as a poignant memory?
Hisham Matar kan na de dood van Khaddafi eindelijk naar het land van zijn jeugd terugkeren en op zoek gaan naar zijn vader. Hisham Matar was negentien toen zijn vader werd ontvoerd en in een Libische gevangenis verdween. Vader en zoon zouden elkaar nooit meer zien. Tweeëntwintig jaar later, na de val van Khaddafi, kon Hisham eindelijk weer terugkeren naar het land van zijn jeugd en op zoek gaan naar zijn vader. In dit hart- verscheurende boek beschrijft hij zijn terugkeer naar een land en een familie die hij dacht nooit meer terug te zullen zien. De terugkeer is een intens, persoonlijk en toch universeel verhaal over verlies en wat het betekent een mens te zijn. ‘Het dramatische verhaal van Hisham Matar over de zoektocht naar zijn vader is het krachtigst als hij anderen aan het woord laat. {…} Het sluitstuk van De terugkeer is hartverscheurend.’ de Volkskrant ‘Met De terugkeer heeft Matar een aangrijpend boek afgeleverd, juist door het persoonlijke element te verweven met de recente geschiedenis van Libië.’ **** NRC Handelsblad ‘Een indrukwekkend boek.’ Trouw
It is 1839 and tension has been rapidly mounting between China and British India following the crackdown on opium smuggling by Beijing. With no resolution in sight, the colonial government declares war. One of the vessels requisitioned for the attack, the Hind, travels eastwards from Bengal to China, sailing into the midst of the First Opium War. The turbulent voyage brings together a diverse group of travellers, each with their own agenda to pursue. Among them is Kesri Singh, a sepoy in the East India Company who leads a company of Indian sepoys; Zachary Reid, an impoverished young sailor searching for his lost love, and Shireen Modi, a determined widow en route to China to reclaim her opium-trader husband's wealth and reputation. Flood of Fire follows a varied cast of characters from India to China, through the outbreak of the First Opium War and China's devastating defeat, to Britain's seizure of Hong Kong.
In September 1838, a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis, a ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind. River of Smoke follows its storm-tossed characters to the crowded harbors of China. There, despite efforts of the emperor to stop them, ships from Europe and India exchange their cargoes of opium for boxes tea, silk, porcelain and silver. Among them are Bahram Modi, a wealthy Parsi opium merchant out of Bombay, his estranged half-Chinese son Ah Fatt, the orphaned Paulette and a motley collection of others whose pursuit of romance, riches and a legendary rare flower have thrown together. All struggle to cope with their losses—and for some, unimaginable freedoms—in the alleys and crowded waterways of 19th-century Canton.
The gods of poetry and death descend on a house in India to vie for the soul of a wounded monkey. A bargain is struck: the monkey must tell a story, and if he can keep his audience entertained, he shall live. The result is Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Vikram Chandra's astonishing, vibrant novel. Interweaving tales of nineteenth-century India with modern America, it stands in the tradition of The Thousand and One Nights, a work of vivid imagination and a celebration of the power of storytelling itself. 'A dazzling first novel written with such originality and intensity as to be not merely drawing on myth but making it.' Sunday Times
A classic of our time Untouched by the twentieth century, Thul, the small fishing village near Bombay, is still ruled by the age-old seasonal rhythms. Hari and Lila have lived in the village all their lives, but their family is now desperately down on its luck. Their father drinks; their mother is seriously ill; and there is no money to keep them fed and clothed. Delicately and exquisitely executed, Anita Desaiýs gentle and probing story traces the evolution of Hari and Lila into adults as each of them faces the familyýs predicamentýjust as the first signs of industrial India creep into their villages.
Een jonge literatuurhistoricus die studie maakt van een 19e-eeuwse dichter vindt enkele bijzondere brieven.