Historical genre books (473)


71.

Chalo Jahaji : On a Journey Through Indenture in Fiji by Brij V. Lal EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Oceania / Fiji flag Fiji
Description:
Indians of the indentured diaspora have a remarkable lot in common. Meeting as 'foreign' students in India, the girmitiya descendants from Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji and Natal immediately develop a close bonding because of their use of common words, similarity of names, culinary preferences and transported texts. In similar manner, when Brij Lal visited Trinidad in 1998, both his physical as well as his spiritual being enabled him to blend immediately with his Bhojpuri brethren in Chinidad Tapu. His book, Chalo Jahaji, focusses ostensibly on the girmit experience in Fiji. It seeks to tell the sto... continue

72.

Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / Albania flag Albania
Description:
Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy’s eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty—as well as the simple pleasures of life. ... continue

73.

Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif, Abd al-Raḥmān Munīf EN

0 Ratings
Country: Asia / Jordan flag Jordan
Description:
Banned in Saudia Arabia, this is a blistering look at Arab and American hypocrisy following the discovery of oil in a poor oasis community. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

74.

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton EN

Rating: 3 (5 votes)
Country: Oceania / Australia flag Australia
Description:
From award-winning author Tim Winton comes an epic novel that regularly tops the list of best-loved novels in Australia. After two separate catastrophes, two very different families leave the country for the bright lights of Perth. The Lambs are industrious, united, and--until God seems to turn His back on their boy Fish--religious. The Pickleses are gamblers, boozers, fractious, and unlikely landlords. Change, hardship, and the war force them to swallow their dignity and share a great, breathing, shuddering house called Cloudstreet. Over the next twenty years, they struggle and strive, laugh ... continue

75.

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje EN

Rating: 4.5 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / Sri Lanka flag Sri Lanka
Description:
Bringing to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era, this book tells the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players--some say the originator of jazz--who was, in any case, the genius, the guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place. In this fictionalized meditation, Bolden, an unrecorded father of Jazz, remains throughout a tantalizingly ungraspable phantom, the central mysteries of his life, his art, and his madness remaining felt but never quite pinned down. Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he c... continue


77.

Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World : Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade by Roquinaldo Ferreira EN

0 Ratings
Description:
This book argues that Angola and Brazil were connected, not separated, by the Atlantic Ocean. Roquinaldo Ferreira focuses on the cultural, religious, and social impacts of the slave trade on Angola. Reconstructing biographies of Africans and merchants, he demonstrates how cross-cultural trade, identity formation, religious ties, and resistance to slaving were central to the formation of the Atlantic world. By adding to our knowledge of the slaving process, the book powerfully illustrates how Atlantic slaving transformed key African institutions, such as local regimes of forced labor that preda... continue

78.

Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction Caryl Phillips' ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora. It tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through different epochs and continents- one as a missionary to Liberia in the 1830s, one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American West later that century, and one a GI posted to a Yorkshire village in the Second World War. 'Epic and frequently astonishing' The Times 'Its resonance continues to deepen' New York Times

79.

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton EN

Rating: 5 (8 votes)
Description:
The heroine in this actor's tour-de-force is an ordinary middle class English housewife. As she prepares egg and chips for dinner, she ruminates on her life and tells the wall about her husband, her children, her past, and an invitation from a girlfriend to join her on holiday in Greece to search for romance and adventure. Ultimately, Shirley does escape to Greece, has an "adventure" with a local fisherman and decides to stay. This hilariously engaging play was a hit in London and New York, performed by Pauline Collins, who later recreated her role on film garnering an Oscar nomination.

80.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese EN

Rating: 5 (12 votes)
Country: Africa / Ethiopia flag Ethiopia
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined. This sweeping, emotionall... continue