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Life in the Ya'ari family is full, complicated and often humorous, but beyond it lies a fragile society deeply uneasy with itself and badly scarred, with each family harbouring its own ghosts.Ever-creative, A.B. Yehoshua's short, interwoven chapters create a duet-like narrative which penetrates deeply into human relationships. He taps into the psyche of the reader as he taps into the psyche of his country, and we emerge altered by what we have read. "Yehoshua ... has been one of his country's most vital chroniclers and critics." Ethan Bronner, The New York Times Book Review "Yehoshua has long been praised for his Faulknerian novels and though the two rather unexceptional middle class Israeli families in Friendly Fire lack the gothic appurtenances of the Snopeses and Compsons, his story is not short on sound and fury." Eric Banks, Financial Times "None of Yehoshua's books, no matter how personal, is without political, historical and religious importance. Friendly Fire is no exception." Haaretz

When his Uncle Hizkel is arrested, Kabi and his family face an uncertain future as do all Jews living in 1950s'' Baghdad. Each member of Kabi''s circle has a different dream: his mother wants to return to the Moslem quarter where she felt safer; his father wants to emigrate to Israel and grow rice there while Salim, his headmaster, wants Arabs and Jews to be equal, and Abu Edouard just wants to continue to care for his beloved doves.

In a moment of idle curiosity, Musa tries on the modest garb of a Muslim woman to experience for himself what it''s like to be veiled. While this causes much mirth among his fellow students at the Madrasah, the elders are not amused, viewing Musa''s experimentation as a prank too far. Back at home he must conform to family life and face the prospect of an arranged marriage. Cleverly, the family patriarch, Dadaji, offers him a deal: a month of days to find himself a bride or else Musa must accept Dadaji''s own choice. And so the race is on for Musa, a devout Muslim and gentle idealist, who dreams of a perfect companion but despairs of ever finding her. When his siblings and friends step in to help, their efforts lead both to hilarity and outrage but soon the dark side of tradition rears its ugly head...A brilliant debut.

In November 1918, socialist revolution sweeps across Germany, transforming Berlin, already ravaged by war, into a political battleground. Four women from the slums are discovered dead, all with identical markings on their back. When the fifth turns out to be Rosa Luxemburg, a leader of the suppressed socialist uprising, the political police complicate the investigations of Detective Inspector Nicolai Hoffner and his assistant Hans Fichte.

Berlin 1927: when an executive at the newly-famous Ufa film studios is found dead in his bath, it falls to Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner, of the Kriminalpolizei to investigate. With the help of the German film director Fritz Lang and the head of the most powerful crime syndicate, Hoffner finds his case reaches deep into Berlin''s sex and drug trade, and into the political world of Hitler''s Brownshirts (the SA). Caught up in this story is Hoffner''s new lover, and his two sons, one of whom works for Joseph Goebbels. We last met Hoffner in Rosa (2007); his relationship with his sons develops menacingly in Shadow and Light.

On the Eve of Hitler''s Olympics, Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner is forced out of the Kriminalpolizei because he is a half Jew. Hoffner is not surprised given the rise of Nazism, and anyway his focus is elsewhere. His son Georg is missing in Spain, swept up in the sudden outbreak of the civil war. He has already lost Sascha, his elder son, to the Nazi regime. But Georg is not what he appears to be, and when Hoffner discovers this, he is determined to save the one son he can. Now, nearly ten years after the events of Shadow and Light, Hoffner finds himself tossed into the chaos that is Spain - where he quickly meets anarchists, Soviet and British secret agents, and a female doctor called Mila Pera - as he follows a trail of clues left by Georg. Rabb delivers another brilliant atmospheric work.

An illuminating and witty dialogue with one of the greatest intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Ramin Jahanbegloo''s interview with Isaiah Berlin grew into a series of five conversations which offer an intimate view of Berlin and his ideas. They include discussions on pluralism and liberty as well as the thinkers and writers who influenced Berlin. This revised edition provided an excellent introduction to Berlin''s thought. Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian philosopher, who has taught in Europe and North America. In 2006 he was imprisoned for several months in Iran. He is currently teaching Political Philosophy at Toronto University. ''Though like Our Lord and Socrates he does not publish much, he thinks and says a great deal and has had an enormous influence on our times''. Maurice Bowra ''Berlin never talks down to the interviewer. Conversations here means the minds of the interviewed and interviewer meet on equal terms in language that is transparently clear, informed, witty and entertaining''. Stephen Spender ''He is wise without seeming pompous, witty without seeming trivial, affectionate without seeming sentimental''. Michael Ignatieff ''Isaiah Berlin... has for fifty years in this talkative and quarrelsome city (Oxford) been something special, admired by all and disliked by no-one... a benevolent super-don''. John Bayley http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/

In Baghdad, Lina is trying to lead a normal life, but politics keep intruding. Violent government coups are almost annual events and it''s difficult for a child to understand what''s going on or who to believe. The need for secrecy means Lina cannot tell her best friend that they are just waiting for the right moment to flee. It is the 1960s and Lina is part of the dwindling Jewish community… Mona Yahia was born in Baghdad in 1954 and escaped with her family to Israel in 1970. In 1985 she moved to Germany to study fine arts and has remained there ever since. Winner of the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize for Fiction 2001 ''Yahia rolls Baghdad around her tongue, savouring its suks, smells, and sweetmeats (reading her makes one hungry). This is a truly exotic novel, but it''s also a coming-of-age work in which the almost imperceptible transformation from childhood to adolescence is saltily observed and never sentimentalised. Yahia''s prose courses with insight and wit. Her deftness of touch means that, despite its subject-matter, this novel never becomes a bleak tale of religious persecution, but remains a fresh story about adolescent experience in adversity - with parallels in the most unlikely places.'' Anne Karpf, The Guardian ''The novel powerfully conveys the author''s outrage, as well as her nostalgia for her native land.'' The Times ''Yahia''s writing evokes both the sensuality of domestic intimacy…alongside the horror of public hangings…When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad is most politically sophisticated, and also most poignant, when it explores questions of language and identity.'' Alev Adil, Times Literary Supplement

As a child growing up in East Jerusalem, the world puzzled Sari Nusseibeh: the prosaic co-existed too closely with the mythical and sacred whilst the political world seemed to him ever-changing and incomprehensible. The young Nusseibeh revelled in the city''s rich past. He played in the streets of his beloved Old City which were steeped not only in the histories of the three great religions but also in his family''s history: for the Nusseibehs had lived here for thirteen centuries serving as judges, teachers, Sufi sages, politicians and, most extraordinary of all, as doorkeeper to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is perhaps this intimate knowledge of the interconnections between the three religions which led to an open-mindedness in Nusseibeh rarely seen in, let alone expressed by, any protagonist in the Palestine-Israel conflict. Like most Palestinians, his family suffered the upheavals and displacements - if not the economic consequences - of the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948, which we witness through his father''s active participation in defining, and infinitely disputed, moments in the Palestine-Israel conflict. Simultaneously a pan-Arab idealist and healthy sceptic, his father became a legendary figure who never succumbed to nationalist ideology or rhetoric. A philosopher by training and profession, Nusseibeh''s political activism developed after his education at Oxford and Harvard, and was both gradual and reluctant. A firm and idealistic believer in the possibility of a one-state solution where Jews and Arabs could co-exist in dignity, he was forced to re-assess these ideas as the Israeli occupation affected Palestinian life irrevocably. While teaching at Birzeit University in the West Bank, he was appointed head of the union, which soon brought him into direct confrontation not only with Israeli military law in the West Bank, but also with the PLO leadership. From then on Nusseibeh realized the power of civil disobedience and developed this into a strategic political tool, coupled with his innate respect for personal freedom and his ability to think rationally. Not afraid to criticize either the Israelis or the Palestinians, he has managed to receive death threats from extremists on both sides and has even been termed "the smiling face of Palestinian terror" by some Israelis. Appointed by Arafat as the PLO representative in Jerusalem in 2001, Nusseibeh''s relationship with him had long been tenuous and reserved. Always aware of Arafat''s achievements, he nevertheless remained highly critical of many aspects of his leadership as well as of the second intifada. Nusseibeh''s unflinching opinions are a fascinating and rare insider''s view into the workings of the first Palestinian Authority. Sari Nusseibeh sees himself on a double mission. He is fighting the Israeli occupation from eradicating the Arab civilization he loves from his native Jerusalem. And at the same time, building the Palestinian institutions necessary to achieve peace, while battling the corruption of Palestinian politics and the extremism of political Islam. Seen by some as a local Don Quixote, his vision of a healthy, democratic society based on respect and tolerance for others and on the freedom of ideas, is crucial to the modern world.

Now an award-winning feature film The Human Resources Manager A suicide bomb explodes in a Jerusalem market. One of the victims is a migrant worker without any papers, only a salary slip from the bakery where she worked as a night cleaner. As her body lies unclaimed in the morgue, her employers are labelled unfeeling and inhuman by a local journalist. The manager of human resources is given the task of discovering who she was and why she had come to Jerusalem. As the image of this once-beautiful dead woman begins to obsess him, the manager turns this duty into a personal mission - he is no longer just saving his company''s reputation by trying to discover her identity and assure her of a dignified funeral. He is now restoring her not only to her family and country but also to common humanity - whilst at the same time conquering the hardness of his own heart.

"Wherever I have found myself has seemed the proper place for me to be. I have never been an exile." When Ellis Douek was nine years old, his mother insisted that he take up embroidery - in case he decided to be a surgeon when he grew up. Of course she was right, as she always was, for he became Consultant ENT Surgeon at Guy''s Hospital in London. The Douek parents had the unerring quality of belonging in whichever country they lived and yet they never stayed long in one place -Egypt, the Sudan, Columbia and, finally, England, moving either out of political necessity or out of impetuosity. In 1940 they took the extraordinary decision, for a Jewish family, to cross the Atlantic from Columbia to Italy, on their way back to Egypt. Ellis Douek describes this work as strands of memory. These strands weave between remembrance of the dawn across the Nile and the silence of the feloukas, summers in Alexandria by the beach, and the seeming security and hedonism of it all -between Nasser and the Suez War which disrupted their lives and uprooted them and Bradford in Yorkshire in the 1950s where Ellis finished his schooling, an austere place after the prosperity and warmth of their life in Egypt. Ellis, his sister Claudia who would become Claudia Roden the cookery writer, and their younger brother Zaki all spent time together in Paris, largely unsupervised by adults. Ellis began his medical training there and tried to live the life of a left-wing intellectual, which was perhaps what led his mother to arrange for him to begin medicine all over again, this time in London, during a time of smog, digs and landladies, fish and chips, and the start of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was also the time of conscription and Ellis became an army medic with the Black Watch in Scotland, during the final days of National Service. Marvelling at the way his life turned out he says, ''wherever I have found myself has seemed the proper place for me to be. I have never been an exile.''

Anne Frank is known worldwide for her powerful Diary written whilst hiding from the Nazis. Less well known are these stories, fables, personal reminiscences and an unfinished novel - now re-issued after being out of print for many years. Also included - for the first time in the UK - are Anne''s edited versions of some of her Diary entries which she re-worked after hearing an appeal by Gerrit Bolkestein, Minister for Art, Education and Science in the Dutch government in exile in London, to the Dutch people to send in, after the war, written accounts of their suffering under Nazi occupation. This gave Anne a purpose and straight away she began the task of re-writing and editing her diaries and stories. Her humour, unflinching honesty and her wisdom - all evident in The Diary - are equally present in these Tales, rendering them an essential part of her legacy. To many people Anne Frank''s name has become synonymous with the Holocaust.

Yochanan Rivlin, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Haifa University, is determined to understand two conflicts that have become central to his life: the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, which he feels will help him better understand the Arab mind and, more personally, his son''s divorce. His is a double search for truth, each involving a different bride-Samaher, his newly-wed Arab research assistant from a village in the Galilee, and Galya, who deserted his son in Jerusalem with no explanation. Against his wife''s better judgment, Rivlin tries obsessively to get to the core of both problems, crossing boundaries at once personal and political-man and wife, father and son, teacher and pupil, Jew and Arab. With equal measures of energy, humour, anxiety, and poetry, Yehoshua portrays a life sometimes improbable, often dark, and infinitely rich. The Liberated Bride is a feat of masterly storytelling from one of the world''s great novelists. "The Liberated Bride seethes with emotions, dreams, ideas, humor, pathos, all against a backdrop of violence, conflict, and terror." The Sun (New York) "Yehoshua seeks to present two worlds, those of Israel''s Jewish majority and its Arab minority. He has done it rather as Tolstoy wrote of war and peace: two novels, in a sense, yet intimately joined. Paradoxically -and paradox…is the book''s engendering force -the war is mainly reflected in the zestfully intricate quarrels in the Jewish part of the novel. The peace largely flowers when Rivlin finds himself breaking through the looking glass into the Arab story." Richard Eder, The New York Times "The Liberated Bride is tinged with the kind of innate, unavoidable suspense that the threat of bus bombs brings." Herald Tribune "The boundaries that are broken down in The Liberated Bride include those within the self and others; mystical boundaries between self and God; political and cultural boundaries and finally, the stylistic boundaries of the novel itself, which Yehoshua is constantly stretching in different directions." International Jerusalem Post "A splendidly realized search for the causes of ruptures that rend families and nations: both timely and timeless." Kirkus Review

Five conversations, each centring on the fate of a different member of the Sephardi Mani family, make up this profound, far-reaching and passionate Mediterranean novel which tells of six generations of the family, but in reverse chronology. In each conversation the responses of one person are absent, thus drawing in the reader as the story reaches back into the past, creating one of the most extraordinary reading experiences in modern literature. On a kibbutz in the Negev in 1982, a student tells her mother about her strange meeting in Jerusalem with Judge Gavriel Mani, the father of her boyfriend whose child she is expecting. On the occupied island of Crete in 1944, a German soldier relates to his adoptive grandmother his experiences there with the Mani family, whom he hunts down. In Jerusalem, occupied by the British in 1918, a young Jewish lawyer serving with the British army briefs his commanding officer on the forthcoming trial for treason of the political agitator Yosef Mani. In a village in southern Poland in 1899, a young doctor reports to his father his experiences at the Third Zionist Congress and his subsequent trip to Jerusalem with his sister, who falls in love with Dr Moshe Mani, an obstetrician. In Athens, in 1848, Avraham Mani reports to his elderly mentor the intricate tale of his trip to Jerusalem and the death there of his young son. ''Mr Mani is conceived on an epic scale as a hymn to the continuity of Jewish life. This formulation sounds pat and sentimental, but Yehoshua''s achievement is the opposite: it always suggests even more complex worlds beyond the vignettes of which the novel is composed. ''Stephen Brook, New Statesman and Society ''Suffused with sensuous receptiveness to Jerusalem -its coppery light, its pungent smells, its babble of tongues, its vistas crumbling with history -Yehoshua''s minutely researched novel ramifies out from the city to record the rich and wretched elements that have gone into the founding and continuation of the nation whose centre it has once again become. ''Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times ''Adjectives come racing to mind to describe Mr Mani, for instance ''rich, complex, exotic, creative, informative'', but ''easy'' is one that does not fit. On finishing it, this reader had the reaction that he had to turn back to the beginning in order to grasp more firmly the sources of his admiration...It is extraordinarily skilful to have captured the Jewish mixture of suffering and revival, despair and messianic hope, without in any way spelling out such heavy themes. ''David Pryce-Jones, The Financial Times ''A.B. Yehoshua has created a historical and psychological universe -nearly biblical in the range and penetration of its enchanting ''begats'' -with an amazingly real Jerusalem at its centre. It is as if the blood-pulse of this ingeniously inventive novel had somehow fused with the hurtling vision of the generations of Genesis. With Mr. Mani, Yehoshua once again confirms his sovereign artistry; and Hillel Halkin''s translation has a brilliant and spooky life of its own. ''Cynthia Ozick

The author''s childhood was spent in Fascist Italy of the 1920s and 1930s. Assimilated Jews, the family''s relationship to their country was stronger than to their religion. Their subsequent fortunes and misfortunes were intricately tied to what would prove to be conflicting loyalties. Segre emerged as an adolescent, naive and unprepared for the realities that awaited him. The crash of 1929 and the introduction of Mussolini''s anti-Jewish laws saw him on the boat to Mandatory Palestine, a rare immigrant with a first-class ticket, jacket, silk tie and detachable linen collar, thrust into the pioneering culture of Palestine in the 1930s. Segre''s humour and irony explore the pathos and contradictions of such situations which have characterised his life. "A haunting tale, beautifully written and with a talent, reminiscent of Proust, to endow the past with a deep psychological meaning ... A stunning exercise in self-awareness." Amos Elon "A fascinating description of childhood in Fascist Italy, a moving account of adolescence in Mandatory Palestine, an extraordinary book, very sad and very funny at the same time." Walter Laqueur "A spellbinding biography of genuine literary value that reads like an adventure story. Those familiar with the bitter and depressing tone of the Jews'' misfortunes in the maelstrom of wars and holocausts will derive a unique freshness from the irony, humour and sensuality of Dan Segre, who acknowledges that he is a fortunate Jew." A.B. Yehoshua "Luminous, almost light-hearted, autobiography about a family of Italian Jews under Mussolini." Frederic Raphael, Books of the Year, Sunday Times The tone of Segre''s beautifully written autobiography, which reads like a Bildungsroman, is certainly ironic rather than tragic." Adrian Lyttelton, The New York Review of Books "Imagine an Italian Jew from a prominent but impoverished Piedmont family serving in the British Army alongside an Arab and under a Jewish Palestinian sergeant, and you have in a nutshell the cultural confusion Professor Segre so cannily explores in this labyrinthine, spell-binding autobiography, full of passionate tenderness." Encounter "This distinguished book has a structure as rigorously cut and shaped as any novel. Segre''s good fortune, which many a novelist would envy, consists in the end in his power to mould his diverse experiences into a deeply satisfying symbol of modern life triumphing over the forces of adversity. Even where so many were hideously defeated, we may rejoice over one who survived and who has celebrated his luck in such captivating fashion." Patrick Parrinder, London Review of Books "A man of scrupulous integrity, great intelligence, wit and humility, Segre describes his childhood in Fascist Italy and youth in wartime Palestine in quite brilliantly captivating and moving prose." The Jewish Chronicle "Taut and illuminating ... memorable ... written with the humility of he who confesses himself and with the honesty of he who bore witness.'' Primo Levi "The only thing most of us know clearly about Nazis is that they were the scum of the earth, but this pathetic, marginal, and in the end rejected Italian fascist does not fit into any Europe or any history that most of us know ... He must be a man of extraordinary moral courage and self-knowledge, since nowhere does he deal lightly with himself ... Maybe the final heroism was to write this book ... I think this book is unique and a sort of masterpiece." Peter Levi, The Independent "He is good at reconstructing events and even better at the more difficult art of recapturing moods and atmospheres ... an unusually attractive book - attractive in its irony, its energy and its moral insight. Mr Segre had some rich material to work with, and he has done it justice." John Gross, The New York Times

"I''m an Arab Jew. I listen to classical music in the morning and Arabic music in the evening." Surprisingly for someone so young, Nuri Imari (whose family we encountered in The Dove Flyer), is appointed advisor on Arab affairs to the Israeli government. With little guidance he is asked by his boss to "set up an office in East Jerusalem, sniff around to see what''s happening there, meet their effendis, and provide me with your evaluations." Everyone is reeling from the aftermath of the Six Day War. The Palestinians cannot comprehend their losses, whilst the Israelis are waking up to a new political reality - and new responsibilities. Nuri discovers complexities and loyalties he could never have imagined. He tries to steer a humane course but soon finds himself confronting bigotry and hatred on both sides. And then he meets Yasmine, a Palestinian woman recently returned from Paris…

After the mysterious death of one Vatican priest and the disappearance of another, Father Ian Pearse, an American working on ancient Christian texts in the Vatican, comes into possession of a mysterious scroll. He discovers ingeniously coded letters and the text of an ancient Manichean prayer that has never before been found in written form. These reveal a Manichean conspiracy - a sect long-thought dead - reaching deep into the present Vatican hierarchy. Racing from the Vatican via an ancient Greek monastery to war-torn Bosnia, Father Pearse has to decipher the cryptograms and codes before the closely guarded heresy is unleashed on the world.

A debut thriller of global intrigue and political conspiracy In the summer of 1531, Medici soldiers, working for Pope Clement VII, tortured to death an obscure Swiss monk, Eusebius Eisenreich. What Eisenreich would not reveal was the location of a simple manuscript, On Supremacy, that far surpassed anything imagined by Machiavelli. The Pope never found the manuscript. This deadly document is at the heart of The Overseer. It has fallen into the hands of a cabal intent on ripping apart society as we know it and creating the terrifying new world order described in the manuscript. A faimile of Eisenreich''s disturbing document has been reprinted in this book.

A husband seeks his wife''s lover who is lost in the turbulence of Israel''s Yom Kippur War. As the story of his quest unfolds and grows in intensity, the main protagonists are drawn into the search and transformed by it: through the different perspective of husband, wife, teenage daughter, young Arab emerges a complex picture of the uneasy present, the tension between generations, between Israel''s past and future, between Jews and Arabs. The Lover was A.B. Yehoshua''s first novel and immediately brought him international recognition. It is brilliant, compassionate and highly original and as accomplished as all his later works.

Yehuda Kaminka, a retired teacher, returns to Israel from the U.S. to divorce his estranged wife who was committed to a mental asylum after she stabbed him. This impending divorce inevitably throws into turmoil the couple''s three children and grandson. Yehuda''s nine days, leading up to Passover, are remembered by different members of the family: A.B. Yehoshua''s brilliance reveals itself in these different voices, each a minor masterpiece.

In the autumn, Molkho''s wife dies. His years of loving care have ended and his newfound freedom proves unlike the one he had imagined. It is an uneasy freedom, filled with the erotic fantasies of a man who must fall in love, but whose longing for meaningful relationships is held hostage by the spirit of his wife. Five Seasons is a subtle and often comic novel about love and renewal, and the determination of a seasoned heart to love.

Tribal leaders in opposition to the government, the corruption of occupation, society torn apart by shifting political loyalties... this is the background to one woman''s powerful story. A Persian Requiem is a powerful and evocative novel. Set in the southern Persian town of Shiraz in the last years of World War II, when the British army occupied the south of Persia, the novel chronicles the life of Zari, a traditional, anxious and superstitious woman whose husband, sef, is an idealistic feudal landlord. The occupying army upsets the balance of traditional life and throws the local people into conflict. sef is anxious to protect those who depend upon him and will stop at nothing to do so. His brother, on the other hand, thinks nothing of exploiting his kinsmen to further his own political ambitions. Thus a web of political intrigue and hostilities is created, which slowly destroys families. In the background, tribal leaders are in open rebellion against the government, and a picture of a society torn apart by unrest emerges. In the midst of this turbulence, normal life carries on in the beautiful courtyard of Zari''s house, in the rituals she imposes upon herself and in her attempt to keep the family safe from external events. But the corruption engendered by occupation is pervasive - some try to profit as much as possible from it, others look towards communism for hope, whilst yet others resort to opium. Finally even Zari''s attempts to maintain normal family life are shattered as disaster strikes. An immensely moving story, A Persian Requiem is also a powerful indictment of the corrupting effects of colonization. A Persian Requiem (first published in 1969 in Iran under the title Savushun), was the first novel written by an Iranian woman and, sixteen reprints and half a million copies later, it remains the most widely read Persian novel. In Iran it has helped shape the ideas and attitudes of a generation in its revelation of the factors that contributed to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Simin Daneshvar''s A Persian Requiem ... goes a long way towards deepening our understanding of Islam and the events leading up to the 1979 Revolution ... The central characters adroitly reflect different Persian attitudes of the time, attitudes that were eventually to harden into support for either the Ayatollah and his Islamic fundamentalism or, alternatively, for the corrupting Westernisation of the Shah. The value of the book lies in its ability to present these emergent struggles in human terms, in the day-to-day realities of small-town life ... Complex and delicately crafted, this subtle and ironic book unites reader and writer in the knowledge that human weakness, fanaticism, love and terror are not confined to any one creed. The Financial Times A Persian Requiem is not just a great Iranian novel, but a world classic. The Independent on Sunday ... it would be no exaggeration to say that all of Iranian life is there. Spare Rib For an English reader, there is almost an embarrassment of new settings, themes and ideas ... Under the guise of something resembling a family saga - although the period covered is only a few months - A Persian Requiem teaches many lessons about a society little understood in the West. Rachel Billington, The Tablet This very human novel avoids ideological cant while revealing complex political insights, particularly in light of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Publishers Weekly A Persian Requiem, originally published [in Iran] in 1969, was a first novel by Iran''s first woman novelist. It has seen sixteen reprints, sold over half a million copies, and achieved the status of a classic, literally shaping the ideas of a generation. Yet when asked about the specific appeal of the novel, most readers are at a loss to pinpoint a single, or even prominent aspect to account for this phenomenal success. Is it the uniquely feminine perspective, allowing the read

Open Heart is a psychological tour de fource about love and the nature of man''s soul. From the opening lines of this first-person narrative, the reader is propelled into the mind of Dr. Benjamin Rubin, an ambitious young internist, who is jockeying for position with the hospital''s top surgeons. But it isn''t until Benjy learns that his position has been terminated, and that he has been selected to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife to India to retrieve their ailing daughter, that Yehoshua sets his hero on a journey of self-discovery.

The year is 999 A.D. Christians in Europe are preparing themselves for the arrival of the Messiah at the millennium and religious fervour is in the air. Sailing from the North African port of Tangier to a small, distant town called Paris are a Jewish merchant, Ben Attar, his two beloved wives and his Arab partner, Abu Lutfi. They have come for a meeting with their third partner the widower, Raphael Abulafia who has been forced to turn his back on their previous trading partnership because of his new wife''s distrust of the dual marriage of Ben Attar. The latter turns this annual trading voyage into a personal quest to legitimise his second wife, restore his honour and, equally important, to show others the richness and humanity in his way of life. A confrontation ensues between people of different cultures whose ways of living and loving are so different, and yet who are of the same religion, believe in the same God and in the same morality. Thus we enter a profound human drama whose moral conflicts of fidelity and desire resonate deeply with our times. A. B. Yehoshua has imaginatively recreated a medieval world with its merchant trade in great depth and sensuous detail. His evocation of one man''s love is lyrical, erotic even, and A Journey to the End of the Millennium will rank with the best of Yehoshua''s work.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was the premier Jewish thinker of his day and one of the best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, earning the sobriquet ''the Socrates of Berlin''. He was thoroughly involved in the central issue of Enlightenment religious thinking: the inevitable conflict between reason and revelation in an age contending with individual rights and religious toleration. He did not aspire to a comprehensive philosophy of Judaism, since he thought human reason was limited, but he did see Judaism as compatible with toleration and rights. David Sorkin offers a close study of Mendelssohn''s complete writings, treating the German, and the often-neglected Hebrew writings, as a single corpus and arguing that Mendelssohn''s two spheres of endeavour were entirely consistent.

An incisive biography of the guiding intellectual presence - and chief internal critic - of Zionism, during the movement''s formative years between the 1880s and the 1920s. Ahad Ha''am (''One of the People'') was the pen name of Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927), a Russian Jew whose life intersected nearly every important trend and current in contemporary Jewry. His influence extended to figures as varied as the scholar of mysticism Gershom Scholem, the Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and the historian Simon Dubnow. Theodor Herzl may have been the political leader of the Zionist movement, but Ahad Ha''am exerted a rare, perhaps unequalled, authority within Jewish culture through his writings. Ahad Ha''am was a Hebrew essayist of extraordinary knowledge and skill, a public intellectual who spoke with refreshing (and also, according to many, exasperating) candour on every controversial issue of the day. He was the first Zionist to call attention to the issue of Palestinian Arabs. He was a critic of the use of aggression as a tool in advancing Jewish nationalism and a foe of clericalism in Jewish public life. His analysis of the prehistory of Israeli political culture was incisive and prescient. Steven J. Zipperstein offers all those interested in contemporary Jewry, in Zionism, and in the ambiguities of modern nationalism a wide-ranging, perceptive reassessment of Ahad Ha''am''s life against the back-drop of his contentious political world. This influential figure comes to life in a penetrating and engaging examination of his relations with his father, with Herzl, and with his devotees and opponents alike. Zipperstein explores the tensions of a man continually torn between sublimation and self-revelation, between detachment and deep commitment to his people, between irony and lyricism, between the inspiration of his study and the excitement of the streets. As a Zionist intellectual, Ahad Ha''am rejected both xenophobia and assimilation, seeking for the Jews a usable past and a plausible future.

Theodor Herzl (1860—1904) was the Paris correspondent of the Austrian Neue Freie Presse when he took a momentous decision in June 1895: he would bring about the creation of a state for the Jews. In his attempt to realise this dream, he became the greatest figure of modern Jewish history and is today seen as the father of the State of Israel. The catalyst for Herzl''s ''conversion'' is usually seen as the Dreyfus affair, which made him realise the impossibility of Jewish existence in Europe. The truth is more complicated and perhaps more dramatic, involving Herzl''s background in the context of central Europe''s Jewish bourgeoisie, the explosion of anti-Semitism in fin de siècle Paris and Vienna, and not least Herzl''s own personal frustrations and dreams. Once decided, his ''state of the Jews'' was to be not only the solution to the physical threat to the Jews, but it would also liberate them from their ghetto existence, and provide them with the ''inner freedom'' which, from personal experience, Herzl thought they lacked. Herzl''s state was to be a model, liberal society, at the forefront of human progress, integrated and at peace with the world community. A century later, this may look naïve - yet, in his vision, Herzl very much speaks to the present age.

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) is one of Germany''s greatest writers. His agile mind and brilliant wit expressed themselves in lyrical and satirical poetry, travel writing, fiction, and essays on literature, art, politics, philosophy and history. He was a biting satirist, and a perceptive commentator on the world around him. One of his admirers, Friedrich Nietzsche, said of him: ''he possessed that divine malice without which perfection, for me, is unimaginable.'' Heine was conscious of living after two revolutions. The French Revolution had changed the world forever. Heine experienced its effects when growing up in a Düsseldorf that formed part of the Napoleonic Empire, and when spending the latter half of his life in France. The other revolution was the transformation of German philosophy in the wake of Kant: Heine explained this revolution wittily and accessibly to the general public, emphasizing its hidden political significance. One of the great ambivalences of Heine''s life was his attitude to being a German Jew in the age of partial emancipation. He converted to Protestantism, but bitterly regretted this decision. In compensation, he explored the Jewish past and present in an unfinished historical novel and in many of his poems.

A journalist and her fixer struggle for the truth where truth is now a victim. Nabil al-Amari is an English teacher in Baghdad, in Saddam''s Iraq, when a chance encounter with Samara Katchens, an American journalist covering the war, changes his life forever. It is April 2003 and American and British forces have recently invaded Iraq. Samara, or Sam for short, is ambitious, cynical and determined. Nabil is both fascinated and bewildered by her, and he''s keen to show her things she doesn''t notice in her rush to cover the news. She is pushed by her editor to seek concrete proof for a story concerning payments for false documents - a practice which breaks all journalistic codes of ethics - ''as if truth were so hard in that way, like rocks and concrete''. In Iraq it is rarely so. As Sam single-mindedly pursues this story, she discovers a chasm between her editor''s expectations and the reality she faces in a city torn apart by war and conflicting loyalties. And in her determination to uncover the truth, she takes one gamble too many, endangering herself, Nabil and his family. ''... a vivid portrait of Baghdad in the traumatic aftermath of invasion.'' - The Guardian. ''... spot-on descriptions of both the craft of reporting and the Iraqi landscape during that volatile time make this novel memorable and informative ... for a glimpse of life under the American occupation of Iraq, few could come close to Prusher''s portrait.'' - Kirkus reviews. ''... this compelling debut is easy to recommend to both male and female readers interested in the Middle East, journalistic ethics, and international affairs.'' - Booklist. ''A fascinating story which gives the texture of life in Iraq as it was lived by foreign journalists and Iraqis at the time of the invasion. It conveys a fresher sense of those years than a thousand news reports''. -- Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent, The Independent. ''A fast-paced, evocative thriller that opens our eyes to the excitements and dangers of Iraq after the fall of Saddam. This gripping, beautifully-observed tale, written with a ring of true authenticity, captures the challenges of a journalist and her loyal fixer navigating their way through an Iraq rarely seen by outsiders.'' -- Rory McCarthy, author of Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq. ''Ilene Prusher''s novel is a compelling account of the first few weeks following the collapse of Saddam Hussein''s regime told through the eyes of a fascinating and gracefully drawn Iraqi everyman... Ms Prusher draws us into his story as he is sometimes unwittingly lured deeper and deeper into the world of war journalism, watching with horror as his country descends into chaos.'' -- Borzou Daragahi, Middle East and North African correspondent, Financial Times. ''A journalist''s fixer is a go-between in so many senses: linguistic, cultural. The fixer straddles borders and boundaries, helping each try to communicate with the Other. Ilene Prusher conjures this so beautifully in her stunning, thrilling debut, as Nabil, an Iraqi English teacher with a poetic soul, is drawn into the unfamiliar, learning as much about his own country and people as about the world in which Samara, the American journalist who has hired him, moves so easily. A unique novel, Baghdad Fixer''s compelling plot is combined with poignant and difficult insights into the life and tragedies of ordinary Iraqis during the war. This is not just a wonderful read, it is an important book for helping us, too, to begin to understand the Other.'' -- Tania Hershman, author of My Mother Was An Upright Piano and The White Road and Other Stories.