This book explores the causes and trends of the current crisis of the domination system in the Arab world. The Member President of the World Forum for Alternatives invites its authors —outstanding academics from the region— to present an approach to the dynamics of social movements, the challenges of an alternative regional integration, political Islam, and the always complex relationships between the Arab world and Europe.

"We the Cubans" by Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera is a catchy and accurate portrait of the essence of Cuban identity. The significance of being an Island; the inescapable relationship between history, society, and politics; the mix of races, religions, and cultures are analyzed here—not from an academic or traditional perspective, but from a more personal approach.

Esta última nos propone, desde su título, el desafío de una mirada introspectiva. Más que un reparto de trabajadores habaneros, Alamar es, en esta novela, una alegoría cubana con la cual el autor persevera en su estilo aglutinador de la realidad, procurando mostrárnosla en su compleja amalgama y con un lenguaje polifónico en que la diversidad cultural de nuestro pueblo se revela en su consistente unidad. Sin ser arquetípicos ni caricaturescos, los personajes ilustran con sus nombres, apariencias y conductas, algunos aspectos de la variopinta sociedad de la isla, de tal forma que en ellos es posible que identifiquemos a algunos vecinos y nos reconozcamos nosotros mismos.

Without any doubt "Raining over Havana" by Julio Travieso Serrano is a faithful portrait of Cuban life in the 1990's. Here we may find characters who move on the margins of Havana society: prostitutes, pimps, procurers, all of them marked by pain and despair but, at the same time, full of love, passion, humor and irony, and always fighting to subsist. Their existential conflicts and psychology have been carefully delineated by the author. Havana, dirty, chaotic, but always beautiful, impregnated by magic and mystery, could well be the main character of this novel that will definitely entrap readers, because from its initial pages they will want to know whether pain or love, life or death triumphs.

A Chinese proverb that reminds us of this book reads: "The strongest and most luxuriant tree lives from what it has underneath." Thus, Cuban culture has nourishing sources that must be fully known in order to enjoy and understand what we are. Generally, the analyses of the nation's profile pay attention to the Hispanic and African components, and the important role of the Chinese channel in our culture is often overlooked. The Chinese Trace in Cuban Literature is, without a doubt, the most notable effort so far to reveal this trace in our literature, from the 19th century to today, and in different literary genres and discursive types; as its author maintains: "From the creation of novel characters designed within a reproductive realism, the assumption of signs typical of Chinese culture and thought for the shaping of the text, the treatment of historical issueseither in the evolutionary outline of a lineage or in the investigation of significant events, the incursion into this problem from generic modalities or literary renovation proposals, to the aesthetic feat of the transcoding of forms and meanings from Chinese to our language and culture".

Fun and refreshing text. Written in colloquial language that facilitates reading and seduces us from the front pages. Ciro Bianchi, chronicles that speak for themselves giving transcendental moments of our history. The text is structured in two parts, the first describes some chapters in the life of great characters of the island: Plácido, Francisco de Miranda, Manuel García, to finish clearing the darkness that surrounds the last hours of life of José Martí. The second section allows us to go, broadly speaking, history ranging from the Republic until the beginning of the year 1959. Loaded with anecdotes and references this is a must read book for those wishing to learn about the history, a clear example of this is that in its pages we discover where slept Fidel Castro during his first night in Havana after the revolutionary triumph. No doubt agree with Nara Araujo when referring to the work of Bianchi said: "(...) their stories teach, and also delight"

"A Pike in Flanders" is a novel enriched by a catchy suspense plot with comic and even erotic touches. More relevantly, we find on each of its pages a message of denunciation and condemnation of the national and world policies the United States have engendered. Making use of three main characters, this detective story shouts at the top of its lungs that we need to attempt to fix the world we are living in.