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| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Reluctant Fundamentalist Mohsin Hamid, 2009-06-05 From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Moth Smoke Mohsin Hamid, 2012-12-04 The debut novel from the internationally bestselling author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an uncommonly gifted and ambitious young literary talent to watch when it was published in 2000. It tells the story of Daru Shezad, who, fired from his banking job in Lahore, begins a decline that plummets the length of Hamid’s sharply drawn, subversive tale. Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke was ahead of its time in portraying a contemporary Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia then familiar to the West. It established Mohsin Hamid as an internationally important writer of substance and imagination and the premier Pakistani author of our time, a promise he has amply fulfilled with each successive book. This debut novel, meanwhile, remains as compelling and deeply relevant to the moment as when it appeared more than a decade ago. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Mohsin Hamid, 2013-03-05 Mr. Hamid reaffirms his place as one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers. –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times A globalized version of The Great Gatsby . . . [Hamid's] book is nearly that good. –Alan Cheuse, NPR Marvelous and moving. –TIME Magazine From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy’s quest for wealth and love His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Discontent and Its Civilizations Mohsin Hamid, 2016-02-02 Originally published in hardccover in 2015 by Riverhead Books. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Educated Tara Westover, 2018-02-20 #1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, Time, NPR, Good Morning America, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, Newsday, New York Post, theSkimm, Refinery29, Bloomberg, Self, Real Simple, Town & Country, Bustle, Paste, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, LibraryReads, Book Riot, Pamela Paul, KQED, New York Public Library |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys, 1992 A considerable tour de force by any standard. ?New York Times Book Review |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: An American Brat Bapsi Sidhwa, 2012-11-01 A sheltered Pakistani girl is sent to America by her parents, with unexpected results: “Entertaining, often hilarious . . . Not just another immigrant’s tale.” —Publishers Weekly Feroza Ginwalla, a pampered, protected sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl, is sent to America by her parents, who are alarmed by the fundamentalism overtaking Pakistan—and influencing their daughter. Hoping that a few months with her uncle, an MIT grad student, will soften the girl’s rigid thinking, they get more than they bargained for: Feroza, enthralled by American culture and her new freedom, insists on staying. A bargain is struck, allowing Feroza to attend college with the understanding that she will return home and marry well. As a student in a small western town, Feroza finds her perceptions of America, her homeland, and herself beginning to alter. When she falls in love with a Jewish American, her family is aghast. Feroza realizes just how far she has come—and wonders how much further she can go—in a delightful, remarkably funny coming-of-age novel that offers an acute portrayal of America as seen through the eyes of a perceptive young immigrant. “Humorous and affecting.” —Library Journal “Exceptional.” —Los Angeles Times “Her characters [are] painted so vividly you can almost hear them bickering.” —The New York Times |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851 |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders Daniyal Mueenuddin, 2011-10-01 Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a powerful collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan. An impoverished young woman becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress; an electrician on the make confronts his desperate assailant to protect his most prized possession; a farm manager rises far in the world—but his family discovers after his death the transience of power; a maid, who advances herself through sexual favours, unexpectedly falls in love. In these linked stories about the family and household staff of the ageing KK Harouni, we meet masters and servants, landlords and supplicants, politicians and electricians, village women, and Karachi housewives. Part Chekhov, part RK Narayan, these stories are dark and light, complex and humane; at heart about the relationship between the powerful and powerless, bound together in life—and in death. Together they make up a vivid portrait of a feudal world rarely brought alive in the English language. Sensuous, graceful, melancholy, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders gives you Pakistan as you have never seen it. It marks the debut of an amazing new talent. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: She Came to Stay Simone de Beauvoir, 1999 Set in Paris on the eve of World War II, the novel draws upon Simone de Beauvoir's relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and the affair that almost destroyed it. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Book of Days Lanford Wilson, 2001 THE STORY: When murder roars through a small Missouri town, Ruth Hoch begins her own quest to find truth and honesty amid small town jealousies, religion, greed and lies. This tornado of a play propels you through its events like a page-turning mys |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Reef Romesh Gunesekera, 1996-02-01 The incandescent (New York Times Book Review) coming-of-age-story and debut novel by the acclaimed Booker Prize finalist Romesh Gunesekera Triton loved living in Mister Salgado's house. It was the biggest house he had ever seen--filled with floors to sweep and silver to polish and meals to cook and adults to impress and a brilliant master whose voice was poetry. And people from all over the world came to the house-- to sell their wares, to talk, to live, for this was where life took place. Even the sun would rise from the garage and sleep behind the del tree at night. And in the house, life was good. But beyond Mister Salgado's house and their Sri Lankan village there was a world. And all around them, it was falling apart... |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: An Immovable Feast Tyler Blanski, 2018-03-27 This work is a winsome and beautifully written account of a modern spiritual journey. It tells the colorful and gripping story of one man's religious path from a fundamentalist Baptist childhood to an adolescence in emergent church spirituality. He moves on through hipster years as a house painter and a musician, then marries and enters a seminary in Wisconsin. After years of wearing a black cassock and preparing to be an Anglican priest, he boldly joins the Catholic Church. An Immovable Feast is a profound love story told with humor, wisdom, and bite. A fresh breeze blows through it as Tyler Blanski reminds us that the Catholic religion is not dead because it is not mortal. It is the festival of heaven on earth. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: What I Loved Siri Hustvedt, 2004-03-01 A powerful and heartbreaking novel that chronicles the epic story of two families, two sons, and two marriages Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the evolution of the growing involvement between his family and Bill's-an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men; their wives, Erica and Violet; and their children, Matthew and Mark. The families live in the same building in New York, share a house in Vermont during the summer, keep up a lively exchange of thoughts and ideas, and find themselves permanently altered by one another. Over the years, they not only enjoy love but endure loss-in one case sudden, incapacitating loss; in another, a different kind, one that is hidden and slow-growing, and which insidiously erodes the fabric of their lives. Intimate in tone and seductive in its complexity, the novel moves seamlessly from inner worlds to outer worlds, from the deeply private to the public, from physical infirmity to cultural illness. Part family novel, part psychological thriller, What I Loved is a beautifully written exploration of love, loss, and betrayal-and of a man's attempt to make sense of the world and go on living. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Gather the Daughters Jennie Melamed, 2018-10-16 Never Let Me Go meets The Giver in this haunting debut about a cult on an isolated island, where nothing is as it seems. Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, ten men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers -- chosen male descendants of the original ten -- are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires. The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. They have children, who have children, and when they are no longer useful, they take their final draught and die. But in the summer, the younger children reign supreme. With the adults indoors and the pubescent in Fruition, the children live wildly -- they fight over food and shelter, free of their fathers' hands and their mothers' despair. And it is at the end of one summer that little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others. Born leader Janey Solomon steps up to seek the truth. At seventeen years old, Janey is so unwilling to become a woman, she is slowly starving herself to death. Trying urgently now to unravel the mysteries of the island and what lies beyond, before her own demise, she attempts to lead an uprising of the girls that may be their undoing. Gather the Daughters is a smoldering debut; dark and energetic, compulsively readable, Melamed's novel announces her as an unforgettable new voice in fiction. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Disappearing Earth Julia Phillips, 2019-05-14 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A propulsive, emotionally engaging debut novel about the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before. “Superb.... Brilliant.... Phillips's deep examination of loss and longing ... is a testament to the novel's power.” —The New York Times Book Review One August afternoon, two sisters—Sophia, eight, and Alyona, eleven—go missing from a beach on the far-flung Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia. Taking us through the year that follows, Disappearing Earth enters the lives of women and girls in this tightly knit community who are connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty—open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, dense forests, the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska—and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Age of Em Robin Hanson, 2016-05-19 Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human. Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks. Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems. While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear. Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship and love. This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Human Web John Robert McNeill, William Hardy McNeill, 2003 Why did the first civilizations emerge when and where they did? How did Islam become a unifying force in the world of its birth? What enabled the West to project its goods and power around the world from the fifteenth century on? Why was agriculture invented seven times and the steam engine just once?World-historical questions such as these, the subjects of major works by Jared Diamond, David Landes, and others, are now of great moment as global frictions increase. In a spirited and original contribution to this quickening discussion, two renowned historians, father and son, explore the webs that have drawn humans together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition, since earliest times. Whether small or large, loose or dense, these webs have provided the medium for the movement of ideas, goods, power, and money within and across cultures, societies, and nations. From the thin, localized webs that characterized agricultural communities twelve thousand years ago, through the denser, more interactive metropolitan webs that surrounded ancient Sumer, Athens, and Timbuktu, to the electrified global web that today envelops virtually the entire world in a maelstrom of cooperation and competition, J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill show human webs to be a key component of world history and a revealing framework of analysis. Avoiding any determinism, environmental or cultural, the McNeills give us a synthesizing picture of the big patterns of world history in a rich, open-ended, concise account. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Ice-Candy-Man Bapsi Sidhwa, 2000-10-14 Now Filmed as 1947, a motion picture by Deepa Mehta Few novels have caught the turmoil of the Indian subcontinent during Partition with such immediacy, such wit and tragic power. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: College Andrew Delbanco, 2023-04-18 The strengths and failures of the American college, and why liberal education still matters As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In describing what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America's democratic promise. In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Child 44 Tom Rob Smith, 2009-04-01 DON'T MISS THE NEW TOM ROB SMITH NOVEL, COLD PEOPLE, OUT NOW! OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD MOSCOW, 1953. Under Stalin’s terrifying regime, families live in fear. When the all-powerful State claims there is no such thing as crime, who dares disagree? AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER IN OVER 30 LANGUAGES An ambitious secret police officer, Leo Demidov believes he’s helping to build the perfect society. But when he uncovers evidence of a killer at large – a threat the state won’t admit exists – Demidov must risk everything, including the lives of those he loves, in order to expose the truth. A THRILLER UNLIKE ANY YOU HAVE EVER READ But what if the danger isn’t from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is fighting to protect? Nominated for seventeen international awards and inspired by a real-life investigation, CHILD 44 is a relentless story of love, hope and bravery in a totalitarian world. From the screenwriter of the acclaimed television series, THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Village by the Sea Anita Desai, 2012 |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: American Grace Robert D. Putnam, David E. Campbell, 2012-02-21 Based on two new studies, American Grace examines the impact of religion on American life and explores how that impact has changed in the last half-century. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Direct Action David Graeber, 2009-09-01 A radical anthropologist studies the global justice movement. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Wicked Gregory Maguire, 2009-09-29 When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? Gregory Maguire has created a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Slavery and Social Death Orlando Patterson, 2018-10-15 Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in 66 societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South. Slavery, he argues, is a single process of recruitment, incorporation on the margin of society, and eventual manumission or death. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Utopia of Rules David Graeber, 2015-02-24 From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence? To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice…though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy. Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible. An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: EBOOK: Critical Theories of Mass Media: Then and Now Paul Taylor, Jan Harris, 2007-12-16 This is a welcome critical corrective to complacent mainstream accounts of the media's cultural impact. Prof. Slavoj Zizek, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London A powerful and highly engaging re-assessment of past critical thinkers (including those not normally thought of as critical) in the light of today's mediascape. Jorge Reina Schement, Distinguished Professor of Communications, Penn State University With the exception of occasional moral panics about the coarsening of public discourse, and the impact of advertising and television violence upon children, mass media tend to be viewed as a largely neutral or benign part of contemporary life. Even when criticisms are voiced, the media chooses how and when to discuss its own inadequacies. More radical external critiques are often excluded and media theorists are frequently more optimistic than realistic about the negative aspects of mass culture. This book reassesses this situation in the light of both early and contemporary critical scholarship and explores the intimate relationship between the mass media and the dis-empowering nature of commodity culture. The authors cast a fresh perspective on contemporary mass culture by comparing past and present critiques. They: Outline the key criticisms of mass culture from past critical thinkers Reassess past critical thought in the changed circumstances of today Evaluate the significance of new critical thinkers for today's mass culture The book begins by introducing the critical insights from major theorists from the past - Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor Adorno, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord. Paul Taylor and Jan Harris then apply these insights to recent provocative writers such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek, and discuss the links between such otherwise apparently unrelated contemporary events as the Iraqi Abu Ghraib controversy and the rise of reality television. Critical Theories of Mass Media is a key text for students of cultural studies, communications and media studies, and sociology. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Looming Tower Lawrence Wright, 2018-02-02 Explores both the American and Arab sides of the September 11th terrorist attacks in an account of the people, ideas, events, and intelligence failures that led to the tragedies. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The War on Science Shawn Lawrence Otto, 2016 Wherever the people are well informed, Thomas Jefferson wrote, they can be trusted with their own government. But what happens when they are not? In every issue of modern society--from climate change to vaccinations, transportation to technology, health care to defense--we are in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of scientific progress and a simultaneous expansion of danger. At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by avast, well-funded, three-part war on science: the identity politics war on science, the ideological war on science, and the industrial war on science. The result is an unprecedented erosion of thought in Western democracies as voters, policymakers, and justices actively ignore the evidence from science, leaving major policy decisions to be based more on the demands of the most strident voices. Shawn Otto's compelling new book investigates the historical, social, philosophical, political, and emotional reasons why evidence-based politics are in decline and authoritarian politics are once again on the rise on both left and right, and provides some compelling solutions to bring us to our collective senses, before it's too late. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Women and Men Joseph McElroy, 2023-01-17 Beginning in childbirth and entered like a multiple dwelling in motion, Women and Men embraces and anatomizes the 1970s in New York - from experiments in the chaotic relations between the sexes to the flux of the city itself. Yet through an intricate overlay of scenes, voices, fact, and myth, this expanding fiction finds its way also across continents and into earlier and future times and indeed the Earth, to reveal connections between the most disparate lives and systems of feeling and power. At its breathing heart, it plots the fuguelike and fieldlike densities of late-twentieth-century life. McElroy rests a global vision on two people, apartment-house neighbors who never quite meet. Except, that is, in the population of others whose histories cross theirs believers and skeptics; lovers, friends, and hermits; children, parents, grandparents, avatars, and, apparently, angels. For Women and Men shows how the families through which we pass let one person's experience belong to that of many, so that we throw light on each other as if these kinships were refracted lives so real as to be reincarnate. A mirror of manners, the book is also a meditation on the languages, rich, ludicrous, exact, and also American, in which we try to grasp the world we're in. Along the kindred axes of separation and intimacy Women and Men extends the great line of twentieth-century innovative fiction. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Leftovers Tom Perrotta, 2011-08-30 With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers—now adapted into an HBO series—is a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss. What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That's what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children. Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin's own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin's teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet A student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he's distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start. A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011 A USA Today 10 Books We Loved Reading in 2011 Title One of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011 |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America Steven M. Gillon, 2006-04-04 Recounts the events of ten pivotal days that changed the course of American history. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Holy Woman Qaisra Shahraz, 2013-06-10 Gripping, hugely involving, and very satisfying KATE MOSSE Set in Pakistan, London and Egypt, this epic drama centres around the life of Zarri, the glamorous daughter of a wealthy landowner. Zarrie Bano is the charismatic 28-year-old daughter of a wealthy Muslim landowner. She falls in love with Sikander, a business tycoon to whom her father takes an immediate dislike. When Zarri's brother is killed in a freak accident, her father decides to make her his heiress, resurrecting an ancient tradition and forcing her into marriage to the Holy Koran, to become her clan's 'holy woman' - a nun. A powerful and compelling family drama, The Holy Woman is a romantic story of love and betrayal within a wealthy Muslim community. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: City of Spies Sorayya Khan, 2017-09-19 Eleven-year-old Aliya Shah lives a double life in Islamabad, Pakistan-at home with her Pakistani father and Dutch mother, and at the American School, where Aliya tries to downplay that she is a half-and-half. But when a hit-and-run driver kills the son of the family's servant, Sadiq, who is also Aliya's dear friend, her world is turned upside down. After she discovers the truth behind the tragedy, a terrible secret that burdens her heart, her conflicted loyalties are tested as never before. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: The Heart Divided Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, 1990 Romanen foregår i den urolige periode af Indiens historie, årene 1930-1942, og belyser dels kvindernes forhold, dels forholdet mellem muslimer og hinduer |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Our Women are Free Wynne Maggi, 2001 An exploration of the lives of women among the Kalasha, a tiny, vibrant community in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Understanding Reading Frank Smith, 2004 A guide to the fundamental aspects of reading covers such topics as why reading is natural and what is involved in learning to read. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: War Brides Helen Bryan, 2008 In 1939 the lives of five women are about to collide in the sleepy little village of Crowmarsh Priors.Evangeline has eloped from New Orleans with a naval captain, Alice is resigned to life as the parish spinster, Elsie is evacuated from the East End to be a maid for Lady Marchmont, Tanni has fled from Vienna with her newborn son, and high-spirited Frances is to see out the war with her godmother. Together these five women face hardship, passion and danger, and form a bond that sees them through their darkest hours, and lasts for the rest of their lives. |
| the reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes: Inscrutable Americans Anurag Mathur, 2016 Gopal, a naive Indian exchange student, goes to America to study chemical engineering. With his absurd notions of the country, Gopal encounters the travails of shopping in departmental stores, the hazards of bar-hopping and of learning the difference between friendship and love the hard way--Back cover. |
RELUCTANT Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of RELUCTANT is feeling or showing aversion, hesitation, or unwillingness; also : having or assuming a specified role unwillingly. How to use reluctant in a sentence. Synonym …
RELUCTANT | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
RELUCTANT definition: 1. not willing to do something and therefore slow to do it: 2. not willing to do something and…. Learn more.
Reluctant - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
Reluctant means resisting or unwilling, while reticent means quiet, restrained, or unwilling to communicate. Is it a distinction worth preserving? If the adjective reluctant applies to you, it …
RELUCTANT Definition & Meaning - Dictionary.com
Reluctant, loath, averse describe disinclination toward something. Reluctant implies some sort of mental struggle, as between disinclination and sense of duty: reluctant to expel students. …
Reluctant - definition of reluctant by The Free Dictionary
reluctant - not eager; "foreigners stubbornly reluctant to accept our ways"; "fresh from college and reluctant for the moment to marry him"
reluctant adjective - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage ...
Definition of reluctant adjective from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. hesitating before doing something because you do not want to do it or because you are not sure that it is the …
RELUCTANT - Meaning & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
If you are reluctant to do something, you are unwilling to do it and hesitate before doing it, or do it slowly and without enthusiasm. [...]
RELUCTANT Synonyms: 48 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-Webster
Some common synonyms of reluctant are averse, disinclined, hesitant, and loath. While all these words mean "lacking the will or desire to do something indicated," reluctant implies a holding …
Meaning of reluctant – Learner’s Dictionary - Cambridge Dictionary
RELUCTANT definition: 1. not wanting to do something: 2. a feeling of not wanting to do something: . Learn more.
Reluctant Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary
RELUCTANT meaning: feeling or showing doubt about doing something not willing or eager to do something
RELUCTANT Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
The meaning of RELUCTANT is feeling or showing aversion, hesitation, or unwillingness; also : having or assuming a specified role unwillingly. How to use reluctant in a sentence. Synonym …
RELUCTANT | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary
RELUCTANT definition: 1. not willing to do something and therefore slow to do it: 2. not willing to do something and…. Learn more.
Reluctant - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms - Vocabulary.com
Reluctant means resisting or unwilling, while reticent means quiet, restrained, or unwilling to communicate. Is it a distinction worth preserving? If the adjective reluctant applies to you, it …
RELUCTANT Definition & Meaning - Dictionary.com
Reluctant, loath, averse describe disinclination toward something. Reluctant implies some sort of mental struggle, as between disinclination and sense of duty: reluctant to expel students. …
Reluctant - definition of reluctant by The Free Dictionary
reluctant - not eager; "foreigners stubbornly reluctant to accept our ways"; "fresh from college and reluctant for the moment to marry him"
reluctant adjective - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage ...
Definition of reluctant adjective from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. hesitating before doing something because you do not want to do it or because you are not sure that it is the …
RELUCTANT - Meaning & Translations | Collins English Dictionary
If you are reluctant to do something, you are unwilling to do it and hesitate before doing it, or do it slowly and without enthusiasm. [...]
RELUCTANT Synonyms: 48 Similar and Opposite Words - Merriam-Webster
Some common synonyms of reluctant are averse, disinclined, hesitant, and loath. While all these words mean "lacking the will or desire to do something indicated," reluctant implies a holding …
Meaning of reluctant – Learner’s Dictionary - Cambridge Dictionary
RELUCTANT definition: 1. not wanting to do something: 2. a feeling of not wanting to do something: . Learn more.
Reluctant Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary
RELUCTANT meaning: feeling or showing doubt about doing something not willing or eager to do something
