Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?

Nuori mustalaistyttö pakenee heimonsa ahdistavia sääntöjä ja törmää valkolaisten ennakkoluuloihin. Lastenkodissa ja 70-luvun lopun lappeenrantalaisissa huumeporukoissa Memesa näkee elämän nurjaa puolta. Hän etsii omaa paikkaansa ja seksuaalista identiteettiään valtaväestön keskellä. Kiba Lumbergin odotettu toinen romaani on itsenäinen jatko-osa esikoisteokselle Musta perhonen.

Nuori mustalaistyttö pakenee heimonsa ahdistavia sääntöjä ja törmää valkolaisten ennakkoluuloihin. Lastenkodissa ja 70-luvun lopun lappeenrantalaisissa huumeporukoissa Memesa näkee elämän nurjaa puolta. Hän etsii omaa paikkaansa ja seksuaalista identiteettiään valtaväestön keskellä. Kiba Lumbergin odotettu toinen romaani on itsenäinen jatko-osa esikoisteokselle Musta perhonen.

Svazkem věnovaným „dlouhému 19. století“, od Francouzské revoluce roku 1789 po vypuknutí první světové války v roce 1914, se uzavírá edice Dějiny Evropy. Michael Rapport přednáší moderní evropské dějiny na univerzitě ve skotském Stirlingu, jeho hlavním oborem zájmu jsou dějiny Francie 19. století. Svůj přehled evropského 19. věku rozdělil do čtyř částí. První se věnuje revoluční Evropě, Francouzské revoluci a Napoleonským válkám a sleduje jejich dopad na zbývající části Evropy, druhá pojednává o ustavení a krizích konzervativní Evropy v letech 1815–1850. V následujících dvou oddílech autor sleduje zrod „nové éry“ po polovině století, sjednocující procesy v Německu a Itálii a pokusy o reformy stávajícího řádu, a v závěrečné části činí čtenáře svědky toho, jak Evropané vstupovali do dějin jako jejich tvůrci v období zrodu masových hnutí – socialistického a revolučního, feministického, nacionalistického. V závěrečných kapitolách věnovaných imperialismu a kořenům 1. světové války M. Rapport vstupuje na půdu následujícího století dvacátého. Kniha nezůstává pouze u přehledu politických dějin, ale sleduje i události a proměny hospodářské, společenské, ideové a kulturní. Evropské 19. století je v knize představeno jako paradoxní období cesty k demokracii i nejhorším totalitním režimům, jaké kdy Evropa zažila.

From the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran. In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature “evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful” (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives.

Nuori mustalaistyttö pakenee heimonsa ahdistavia sääntöjä ja törmää valkolaisten ennakkoluuloihin. Lastenkodissa ja 70-luvun lopun lappeenrantalaisissa huumeporukoissa Memesa näkee elämän nurjaa puolta. Hän etsii omaa paikkaansa ja seksuaalista identiteettiään valtaväestön keskellä. Kiba Lumbergin odotettu toinen romaani on itsenäinen jatko-osa esikoisteokselle Musta perhonen.