{"title":"SEVEN STORIES","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"sumud-a-new-palestinian-reader","title":"Sumud","description":"An anthology that celebrates the power of culture in Palestinian resistance, with selections of memoir, short stories, essays, book reviews, personal narrative, poetry, and art.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncludes twenty-five black-and-white illustrations by Palestinian artists.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Arabic word sumūd is often loosely translated as “steadfastness” or “standing fast.” It is, above all, a Palestinian cultural value of everyday perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation. Sumūd is both a personal and collective commitment; people determine their own lives, despite the environment of constant oppressions imposed upon them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis anthology spans the 20th and 21st centuries of Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 2021–2024. The collection of writing and art features work from forty-six contributors including:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDispatches from Hossam Madhoun, co-founder of Gaza's Theatre for Everybody, as he survives the post-October 2023 war on Gaza; Novelist Ahmed Masoud with “Application 39,” a sci-fi short story about a Dystopian bid for the Olympics; Sara Roy and Ivar Ekeland with “The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue,” an analysis of Israel’s divide and conquer policies of fragmentation; Historian Ilan Pappé with a review of Tahrir Hamdi’s book, Imagining Palestine, in which heunpacks the relationship between culture and resistance; Essayist Lina Mounzer with “Palestine and the Unspeakable,” an offering on the language used to dehumanize Palestinians; And poetry by the next generation of poets who have inherited the mantle of the late Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008).\u003cbr\u003eThe essays, stories, poetry, art and personal narrative collected in Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader is a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians’ aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of culture’s power and importance during occupation and war.","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45975578443933,"sku":null,"price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/9781644214459.jpg?v=1746652801"},{"product_id":"the-censors-notebook-a-novel","title":"The Censor's Notebook","description":"A fascinating narrative of life in communist Romania, and a thought-provoking meditation on the nature of literature and censorship.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2023 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Censor’s Notebook is a window into the intimate workings of censorship under communism, steeped in mystery and secrets and lies, confirming the power of literature to capture personal and political truths.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe novel begins with a seemingly non-fiction frame story—an exchange of letters between the author and Emilia Codrescu, the female chief of the Secret Documents Office in Romania’s feared State Directorate of Media and Printing, the government branch responsible for censorship. Codrescu had been responsible for the burning and shredding of the censors’ notebooks and the state secrets in them, but prior to fleeing the country in 1974 she had stolen one of these notebooks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, forty years later, she makes the notebook available to Liliana, the character of the author, for the newly instituted Museum of Communism. The work of a censor—a job about which it is forbidden to talk—is revealed in this notebook, which discloses the structures of this mysterious institution and describes how these professional readers and ideological error hunters are burdened with hundreds of manuscripts, strict deadlines, and threatening penalties. The censors lose their identity, and are often frazzled by neuroses and other illnesses.","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45975584276637,"sku":null,"price":23.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/9781644211502.jpg?v=1746652799"},{"product_id":"simpatia-a-novel","title":"Simpatía","description":"LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRodrigo Blanco Calderón has established himself as one of the great voices of Latin American literature with his debut novel The Night, and his short story collection Sacrifices.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSimpatía is a suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSimpatía is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina's departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Martín Ayala. Thanks to Ayala’s will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission—to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simón Bolívar to Hugo Chávez. The untranslatable title, Simpatía, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45975635689629,"sku":null,"price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/9781644213650.jpg?v=1746652796"},{"product_id":"the-ukraine","title":"The Ukraine","description":"A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction— irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient—by a Ukrainian writer currently fighting for his country in Kyiv.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncludes the celebrated title story \"The Ukraine,\" which was published in the New Yorker in 2022.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Ukraine is a collection of 26 pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country through its tastes, smells, and sounds, its small towns and big cities, its people and their compassion and indifference, simplicities and complications.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the title story, Chapeye facetiously plays with the English misuse of the article “the” in reference to Ukraine, capturing a country as perceived from the outside, by foreigners. That pseudo-kitsch, often historically shallow, and not-quite-real Ukraine resonates because of its highly engaging and brutally candid snapshots of ordinary lives and typical places.\u003cbr\u003eIn “One Soul per Home” an elderly woman laments that the men are dying and the young are leaving for the cities, changing the face of her small town;\u003cbr\u003eIn “The Unscrupulous Spirit of the Provinces,” a couple of unspecified gender get stoned and go to church; and in “False Premises,” a man romanticizes his younger years working for a Soviet fishing fleet only to reconstruct his nostalgia in the face of Putin’s Russia.\u003cbr\u003eThe Ukraine conveys to readers a place that Chapeye and his countrymen are currently fighting for with their lives. The book features a preface by the author, which he composed on his phone from the front lines.","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45975639261341,"sku":null,"price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/9781644212950.jpg?v=1746652795"},{"product_id":"woman-life-freedom","title":"Woman, Life, Freedom","description":"An urgent, groundbreaking and visually stunning new collection of graphic story-telling about the present Iranian revolution, using comics to show what would be censored in photos and film in Iran.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMarjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, returns to graphic art with this collaboration of over 20 activists, artists, journalists, and academics working together to depict the historic uprising, in solidarity with the Iranian people and in defense of feminism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn September 13th 2022, a young Iranian student, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by the morality police in Tehran. Her only crime was that she wasn’t properly wearing the headscarf required for women by the Islamic Republic. At the police station, she was beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital, where she fell into a deep coma. She died three days later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA wave of protests soon spread through the whole country, and crowds adopted the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”—words that have been chanted around the world during solidarity rallies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn order to tell the story of this major revolution happening in her homeland, Marjane Satrapi has gathered together an array of journalists, activists, academics, artists, and writers from around the world to create this powerful collection of full-color, graphic-novel-style essays and perspectives that bear witness:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eContributing artists: Joann Sfar, Coco, Mana Neyastani, Catel, Pascal Rabate, Patricia Bolanos, Paco Roca, Bahareh Akrami, Hippolyte, Shabnam Adiban, Lewis Trondheim, Winshluss, Touka Neyastani, Bee, Deloupy, Nicolas Wild, and Marjane Satrapi.\u003cbr\u003e3 expert perspectives on Iran: long-time journalist for Libération and political scientist Jean-Pierre Perrin; researcher and Iran specialist Farid Vahid; and UC Berkeley historian Abbas Milani, Director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University.\u003cbr\u003eWoman, Life, Freedom demonstrates that this is not an unexpected movement, but a major uprising in a long history of women who have wanted to affirm their rights. 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These realizations combine in the central theme of the book, one which the narrator describes as, “stories bring you youth.”","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46359457235101,"sku":null,"price":23.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/11046093482773.jpg?v=1746652792"},{"product_id":"the-years","title":"The Years","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eConsidered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Years\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLocal dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. 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Real and fictional characters, most of them are writers, exchange the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began with the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles. The author shifts between crime fiction and metafiction, cautioning readers that the events retold are both true and manipulated. This is a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010. The title of the book, originally also in English, is a gesture towards Chavism's failure to resist US influence. Yet, the form is unapologetically literary, a reflection on the depiction and distortion of reality through storytelling. 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The writing straddles the shifting line between pure, unadorned storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PRH","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48138761896093,"sku":null,"price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/8783\/5037\/files\/mundocruel.jpg?v=1778278789"}],"url":"https:\/\/postcardbookshop.com\/collections\/seven-stories.oembed","provider":"Postcard Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}