This autobiography gives a detailed account of his childhood in a primitive society and the conditions prevailing during the Franco-Algerian conflict and its aftermath. The book describes his search for a place to settle and his quest to find a niche in society and his chosen profession, tracing his philosophical and psychological course through life. It portrays life in the Muslim community in the USA, the author's relationships with people of all walks of life and origins, and his teaching experiences in an international, multicultural context. Widely read in world philosophy and religions, and psychology, Abdallah Nacereddine provides a penetrating insight into human nature the world over, with the accounts of his experiences from philosophical and psychological points of view and his comments on the international events in which he was caught up. His life history is sometimes sad, often funny, but, above all, thought provoking.

Abdallah Nacereddine first taught Arabic in the United States before moving to Switzerland, where he led Arabic language courses at the League of Arab States and in conjunction with the Arab-Swiss Chamber of Commerce. He directed his own Institute for Arabic Language Teaching in Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, and Zurich, and taught Arabic at the United Nations in Geneva for over twenty-two years. At present, he is teaching at the International Labour Office. His teaching materials are the result of this experience and have been thoroughly tested in class. One of the first Arabic grammar books was published in the 13th century, under the title al-Alfia (didactic treatise in one thousand lines) by Ibn Malek (600-673 A. H. / 1203-1274 A. D) Since that time, Arabic grammar has not changed at all. In 1636, Thomas Erpenius published his definitive work, Grammatica Arabica, in Latin at Leiden. He followed a methodology which suited the European mind and adopted a specific terminology, which had to be applied by every non Arabic-speaking grammarian. Following this, several Arabic grammar books were published in different languages. Contrary to the grammar of other languages which have continued to evolve, Arabic grammar has remained unchanged. There are already a certain number of Arabic grammar books. What then is the point of publishing yet another? From his childhood, the author studied Arabic grammar, mainly from the al-Alfia treatise. He started to teach it in exactly the same archaic manner that he had learnt it. It was when he began to teach Arabic at the United Nations in Geneva to non-Arabic speakers in a multicultural context that he had to learn a new teaching method and its terminology. He therefore started to follow the European methodology for teaching Arabic grammar and to use its terminology.

From a very young age, Abdallah Nacereddine was known for his Words of Wisdom; not amusing, childish, or witty words, but something very wise and solemn. Family members, relatives and neighbors even reminded him of them many years later. But in an illiterate society, no one recorded them in writing. It was only in the 1960s, thanks to the books he read, mainly on Western philosophy, that Abdallah Nacereddine started to write down his thoughts and reflections. They were an immediate success among his circle of friends and acquaintances, and he published three books from 1967 to 1970. During trips to Japan, his writings in English and French were very much appreciated and translated into Japanese for publication in literary reviews. After teaching Arabic and producing textbooks for many years, Abdallah Nacereddine started writing again. He produced a new book in 2004, and published his Words of Wisdom in English, Arabic and French on his website. Thanks to their success, this book is published to bring to another audience his writings in English in the form of couplets. An Index gives the reader access to their themes, from Good, Life, and Love to Man, Woman, Suffering and Healing.

This Handbook of writing and pronunciation is the fruit of several years’ teaching the Arabic language at the United Nations Office in Geneva and interaction with students from fifty different countries, i.e. from different religions cultures, and linguistic origins. It is the collection of lessons prepared to reply specifically to the immediate needs of each student, taking especially into consideration his or her language of origin. The Arabic alphabet contains several letters and sounds which do not exist in other languages. Learners differentiate between them with difficulty and often confuse them. Among the languages which use the Arabic alphabet, there are several letters which are written and pronounced differently, as in Persian, Urdu or Pashto. This is why, whatever the language of origin of the learner, I insist on good handwriting and good pronunciation from the very beginning. In these languages, there are also words of Arabic origin, but they have different meanings. This is also true for other languages which do not use the Arabic alphabet but which are influenced by Islam, such as Malay and Wolof, or by Arab-Islamic civilisation, such as Maltese and Spanish. To know a language is to know the mentality, the way of thinking and of expressing himself, the customs, and the life style of the person who speaks that language. It is never possible to know and understand a people without knowing its language; through studying the language, you can identify with the people and even come to love them. This book is not a treatise on comparative linguistics. However, instead of dealing only with the languages which use the Arabic alphabet, I refer to other languages, since I find that there are common features which every student of Arabic must know, whatever his language of origin, whether or not it uses the Arabic alphabet.

Some individuals react creatively only when the thunderstorm of uncertainty hits hard, others are always in a passive mode chugging along creating through trial and error. Then there is a the case of busybodies who wink once in a while, sometimes when the clouds appear, dissipate or find themselves enjoying the rare luxury of experiencing their mind emptied of the then preoccupation and drop like balloon into wordy phantagoric dance trivializing all other motor neurons with sensations cascading into poetry, songs, lyrics and what not, leaving behind the tickle, itching sensation, imploding as an on-demand hurt and explode. Facing constant rivalry among splinters pinpricking to learn how embryos grow, how DNA shoots out messages, how to talk about it and do it such, Sohan gets into the fit of writing prose or poetry, quite a counter to the tedious, precise and meaningful science texts. When that happens, Splinters come alive, shooting darts, sometimes blinding hot, sometimes dainty as cauliflower crackle, all playing mind games over six decades and asking for more!. Inflammation causes pain but it often flummoxes the psyche into asking for more, not for the drivel but with disdain for pain and pleasure for wordy duels starring cognitive forgetfulness damning the pomp with a pristine smile, and fingers like feathers clasping the flutter of petals painting the drift across the looks and likes of splinters itched with the desire for togetherness, poking for the perfume of love enshrined in the colours of yesteryears! Splinters like shreds of sparkling water splashing from Le Jet d’Eau to craft a hero’s welcome to the intruder while the Demon mocks and the Fairy retorts. The journey through splinters has been that of the passion in the midst of the plasmatic fire for dismantling the myths while aiming for the boards but crashing on the beams. With nearly a hundred scientific texts, the prose and poetry has rivalled equally as if the efforts to reveal the real is compensated by the wayward travels in the dreamland of fantasy in English, Marathi, and French! Splinters have embedded in the cerebellar trees topsy-turvy and brought me down stripping, teasing and peeling off the layers of the desire that he seeks to give away while seeking alms of pleasure. Some journey must it have been! Hopefully the readers will enjoy being distracted while seeking parsimony! And, behold, Francis Perret has summed it all in his painting gtremoring the cover page.

Drawn from the acclaimed New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the articles in this concise new reference book provide a complete survey of the poetic history and practice in every major national literature or cultural tradition in the world. As with the parent volume, which has sold over 10,000 copies since it was first published in 1993, the intended audience is general readers, journalists, students, teachers, and researchers. The editor's principle of selection was balance, and his goal was to embrace in a structured and reasoned way the diversity of poetry as it is known across the globe today. In compiling material on 106 cultures in 92 national literatures, the book gives full coverage to Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, as well as other obscure ones such as Hittite), the ancient middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian), subcontinental Indian poetries (the widest linguistic diversity), Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, and half a dozen others), continental American poetries (all the modern Western cultures and native Indian in North, Central, and South American regions), and African poetries (ancient and emergent, oral and written).