Five nuanced and powerful historical novels depicting the clashes among Muslims, Christians, and Jews from the Crusades to twenty-first-century London. Celebrated British-Pakistani journalist and author Tariq Ali takes a mind-expanding journey through the ages with these five acclaimed works of fiction, available now in one collection. Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree: “Ali captures the humanity and splendor of Muslim Spain” in “an enthralling story, unraveled with thrift and verve” (The Independent). For the doomed Moors, the fall of Granada and the approaching forces of Christendom bring not peace but the sword. The Book of Saladin: After Saladin reclaims the holy city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he turns to a Jewish scribe to record his story, which Edward Said calls “a narrative for our time, haunted by distant events and characters who are closer to us than we had dreamed.” The Stone Woman: “Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world,” proclaims the New York Times Book Review, as a distant descendant of an exiled Ottoman courtier suffers a stroke in Istanbul, and his family rushes to his side to hear his last stories. A Sultan in Palermo: In “a marvelously paced and boisterously told novel of intrigue, love, insurrection and manipulation,” cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi is caught between his friendship with King Roger of Sicily and the resentments of his fellow Muslims (The Guardian). Night of the Golden Butterfly: A Lahore-born writer living in London is called back to his homeland by an old friend who, at seventy-five, has finally fallen in love. “If Pakistan is a land of untold stories,” writes the New Statesman, Ali is “the country’s finest historian and critic.”

"Inspired by Jason Goodwin's bestselling mystery novels, Yashim Cooks Istanbul evokes the colors and flavours of the Ottoman world, with recipes from simple meze and vegetable dishes to meat, fish, and puddings."--Back cover.

Within his broad historical narrative Professor Smallman provides descriptive analyses of key works, many with music examples, and also comments perceptively on local trends and developments.

Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, City of the Fearless explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in Istanbul in the critical years before and after the 1980 military coup, the defining event in the neoliberal reengineering of the city. Bringing together developments in anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, and social theory, Christopher Houston offers new insights into the meaning and study of urban violence, military rule, activism and spatial tactics, relations between political factions and ideologies, and political memory and commemoration. This book is both a social history and an anthropological study, investigating how activist practices and the coup not only contributed to the globalization of Istanbul beginning in the 1980s but also exerted their force and influence into the future.

This groundbreaking series of essays offers new insights into Turkish cultures both past and present. Moving beyond the traditional binaries of east/west, Islam/secularism, and Europe/Asia, the book contains a variety of perspectives on contemporary Turkey, from actors, directors, critics and other major cultural figures. The book tries to situate these opinions in context by looking at how such perspectives are employed in different cultural spheres—education, theatre, politics and the like. Exploring Turkish Cultures contains the first major interviews published in English with prominent public figures, including actors Türkân Şoray, Genco Erkal and Nesrin Kazankaya. Other figures interviewed include film directors Derviş Zaim and documentary filmmakers Ben Hopkins, Pelin Esmer and Özgür Doğan. An extended interview with the author, translator and academic Talât Halman rounds off the interview section. Complementing these interviews are a series of essays on major Turkish films and theatrical productions, both past and present. Combining historical analysis, comment and evaluation from an author who has spent two decades living in Turkey, Exploring Turkish Cultures represents a major contribution to contemporary Turkish studies.

Secret Carnival Workers is the first volume to bring together Paul Haines' poems, short fiction and music journalism - influenced by jazz, Dada and the Surrealists - in all its complex and creative breadth. Including uncollected fictions, epigrammatic poems and lyrics and writings on music composed between 1955 and 2002, this book finally places a major talent under the spotlight.

'Ali spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights.'âe"The Times.