Oneworld Publications strana 3 z 18

One of National Book Tokens' '23 Books to Read in 2023' A Times Literary Supplement Summer Book 2023, picked by Irina Dumitrescu An atmospheric, feminist retelling of the early life of famed villainess Morgan le Fay, set against the colourful chivalric backdrop of Arthurian legend. When King Uther Pendragon murders her father and tricks her mother into marriage, Morgan refuses to be crushed. Trapped amid the machinations of men in a world of isolated castles and gossiping courts, she discovers secret powers. Vengeful and brilliant, it's not long before Morgan becomes a worthy adversary to Merlin, influential sorcerer to the king. But fighting for her freedom, she risks losing everything – her reputation, her loved ones and her life.

SHAKESPEARE: increasingly irrelevant or lone literary genius of the Western canon? Professor Farah Karim-Cooper grew up loving the Bard, perhaps because Romeo and Juliet felt Pakistani to her. But why was being white as a ‘snowy dove’ essential to Juliet’s beauty? Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in beloved plays from Othello to The Tempest with a radical reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard entreats us neither to idealise nor to fossilise Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society. If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril. But if we dare to bring Shakespeare down from his plinth, we might unveil a playwright for the twenty-first century. We might expand and enrich his extraordinary legacy. We might even fall in love with him all over again.

Silicon for microchips; manganese for batteries; titanium for missiles. The moon contains a wealth of natural resources. So, as the Earth's supplies have begun to dwindle, it is no surprise that the world's superpowers and wealthiest corporations have turned their eyes to the stars. As this new Space Race begins, A.C. Grayling asks: who, if anyone, owns the moon? Or Mars? Or other bodies in near space? And what do those superpowers and corporations owe to Planet Earth and its inhabitants as a whole? From feudal common land, through the rules of the sea, to the vast, nationless expanse of Antarctica, Grayling explores the history of the places which no one, and therefore everyone, owns. Examining the many ways this so-called terra nullius has fallen victim to 'the tragedy of the commons' - the tendency for communal resources to be exploited by a few individuals for personal gain at the expense of everyone else - Who Owns the Moon? puts forward a compelling argument for a bold new global consensus, one which recognises and defends the rights of everyone who lives on this planet.

There's no such thing as a former KGB man. Agents of Influence reveals the secret history of an intelligence agency gone out of control, accountable to no one but itself and intent on subverting Western politics on a near-inconceivable scale. In 1985, 1,300 KGB officers were stationed in the USA. The FBI only had 350 counter-intelligence officers. Since the early days of the Cold War, the KGB seduced parliamentarians and diplomats, infiltrated the highest echelons of the Civil Service, and planted fake news in papers across the world. More disturbingly, it never stopped. Putin is a KGB man through and through. Journalist Mark Hollingworth reveals how disinformation, kompromat and secret surveillance continue to play key roles in Russia's war with Ukraine. It seems frighteningly easy to destabilise Western democracy.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A "brilliant...essential and surprisingly thrilling book about motherhood" (The New York Times) and the early postpartum days, following a woman struggling with maternal fear and its looming madness and showing how difficult and fragile those days can be—and how vital love is to pull anyone out from the dark There is the before and the after. Withering in the maternal prison of her apartment, a new mother finds herself spiraling into a state of complete disaffection. As a translator, she is usually happy to spend her days as the invisible interpreter. But now home alone with her newborn, she is ill at ease with this state of perpetual giving, carrying, feeding. The instinct to keep her baby safe conflicts with the intrusive thoughts of causing the baby harm, and she struggles to reclaim her identity just as it seems to dissolve from underneath her. Feeling isolated from her supportive but ineffectual husband, she strikes up a tentative friendship with her ailing upstairs neighbour, Peter, who hushes the baby with his oxygen tank in tow. But they are both running out of time; something is soon to crack. Joyful early days of her pregnancy mingle with the anxious arrival of the baby, and culminate in a painful confrontation – mostly, between our narrator and herself. Striking and emotive, The Nursery documents the slow process of staggering back towards the simple pleasures of life and reentering the world after post-partum depression.

Eastern Europe is more than the sum total of its annexations, invasions and independence declarations. From the Baltics to the Balkans, from Prague to Kiev, the area exuded a tragicomic character like no other. This is a paean for a disappearing world of movable borders, sacred groves and syncretism. And an invitation to not forget.

Science and religion have always been at each other’s throats, right? Most things you ‘know’ about science and religion are myths or half-truths that grew up in the last years of the nineteenth century and remain widespread today. The true history of science and religion is a human one. It’s about the role of religion in inspiring, and strangling, science before the scientific revolution. It’s about the sincere but eccentric faith and the quiet, creeping doubts of the most brilliant scientists in history – Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein. Above all it’s about the question of what it means to be human and who gets to say – a question that is more urgent in the twenty-first century than ever before. From eighth-century Baghdad to the frontiers of AI today, via medieval Europe, nineteenth-century India and Soviet Russia, Magisteria sheds new light on this complex historical landscape. Rejecting the thesis that science and religion are inevitably at war, Nicholas Spencer illuminates a compelling and troubled relationship that has definitively shaped human history.

In an old wardrobe a djinn sits weeping. It whimpers and murmurs small words of complaint. It sucks its teeth and berates the heavens for its fate. It curses the day it ever entered this damned house. Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate overlooking the sparkling ocean beyond South Africa's eastern coast. Now, its Palladian windows and marble parapets, its golden domes and Romanesque towers have fallen into disrepair. Now, Akbar Manzil is where people come to forget, or to be forgotten. Teenage Sana arrives with her father, Bilal, both of them hoping for a fresh start after the tragedies that have blighted their family. But when the ghost of Sana's sister alerts her to the presence of a djinn that lingers just out of reach in the shadowy corners of the house, Sana embarks on a quest to uncover the history of her unnerving new home. Soon, her own story intertwines with that of a young woman who lived there some eighty years earlier, a woman whose tragic fate holds the key to Akbar Manzil's ultimate secret. Endlessly playful and richly imaginative, Shubnum Khan's vibrant debut delves into the transformative powers of love and grief as it explores the legacy of South Africa's complicated past.

Four lives, entwined forever by decisions made in a time of conflict. But what happens decades later when they unexpectedly converge once more? Trang and Quynh: sisters who leave their rural village for the bustling city of Saigon, desperate to find work to help their impoverished parents. When they take jobs as ‘ bar girls’, paid to flirt with American GIs, they must decide whether they are willing to turn their backs on the people they used to be. Phong: one of the thousands of mixed-race children abandoned by their American fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Phong grows up surrounded by rejection, insulted as a ‘Black American imperialist’, and a ‘child of the enemy’. But he never gives up hope of finding his parents and proving he is more than a ‘bui doi’: more than the ‘dust of life’. Dan: A former American helicopter pilot still plagued by regrets about his actions during the Viet Nam war. Now he has returned in the hope of confronting the demons that refuse to fall silent. Set between the Viet Nam war and the present day, Dust Child is a sweeping epic of family secrets and hidden heartache, from an internationally celebrated author.

A provocative reinterpretation of the tumultuous late 1970s and early 1980s in the Middle East In the latter half of the twentieth century, a revolutionary idea promised to upend the global order. Anti-imperialist militancy, bolstered by international solidarity, would lead to not only the national liberation of oppressed peoples but universal emancipation, shattering the division between the prosperous nations of the capitalist West and the poorer countries of the Global South. The idea was Third Worldism, and among others it inspired struggles in Iran and Palestine. By the early 1980s, however, progressive visions of independence and freedom had fallen to the reality of an oppressive Islamic theocracy in Iran, while the Palestinian Revolution had been eclipsed by civil war in Lebanon, Israeli aggression and intra-Arab conflict. This thought-provoking volume explores the dramatic decline of Third Worldism in the Middle East. It reveals the lived realities of the time by focusing on the key protagonists – from student activists to guerrilla fighters, and from volunteer nurses to militant intellectuals – and juxtaposes the Iranian and Palestinian cases to offer a riveting re-examination of this defining era. Ultimately, it challenges us to reassess how we view the end of the long 1960s, prompting us to reconsider perennial questions concerning self-determination, emancipation, change and solidarity.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake comes a new epic duology following a young woman’s training to shepherd a princely hero to victory. Perfect for fans of Alexandra Bracken and Stephanie Garber. TO BE AN ARISTENE IS TO GIVE UP YOUR MORTAL LIFE AND TO BE GRANTED A NEW ONE. The Aristene is a mythical order of female warriors. While heroes are the ones immortalized in legends, it’s the Aristene who guide their paths to victory. They are the Heromakers. Reed – an orphan raised by the order – has always dreamed of taking her place beside her sisters-in-arms. To do that, she must help her first hero achieve glory on the battlefield. Nothing is going to stop Reed. Until, that is, she is assigned the fiery and infuriating Prince Hestion. As their alliance turns into something more, she starts to question the true cost of becoming an Aristene. With battle looming, Reed must make an impossible choice – her hero or her order.

A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the three-time International Booker Prize finalist, 'lead[ing] a vanguard of Latin American writers forging their own 21st-century canon.' -O, the Oprah magazine The world of Samanta Schweblin's short stories is dark and destabilising. Here, home is not a place of safety but the site of hidden danger, silent menace, unspoken resentment. Picture-perfect doors and spotless windows conceal lives in disarray, slowly unraveling in the face of obsession and fear, jealousy and desire. Unsettling, exhilarating and fiercely original, these prizewinning stories expose raw and uncomfortable truths about the people and places we think will keep us safe, and ask what happens when that promise proves empty.

Here's how the history of the Roman Empire usually goes... We start with Romulus, go on to Brutus overthrowing Tarquin, bounce through an appallingly tedious list of battles and generals and consuls, before emerging into the political stab-fest of the late Republic. From there, it runs through all the emperors, occasionally mentioning a wife or mother to show how bad things get when women get out of control, until Constantine invents Christianity and then Attila the Hun comes and ruins everything. But the history of Rome and empire is so much more than these Important Things. In this alternative history, Emma Southon traces the story of the Roman Empire through women: Vestal Virgins and sex workers, business owners and poets, martyrs and saints. Each gives a different perspective on women's lives and how they changed, across time and across class lines.

How the British might have handled Hitler differently remains one of history’s greatest ‘what ifs’. Coffee with Hitler tells the astounding and poignant story, for the first time, of a handful of amateur British intelligence agents who wined, dined and befriended the leading National Socialists between the wars. With support from royalty, aristocracy, politicians and businessmen, they hoped to use the much mythologised Anglo-German Fellowship as a vehicle to civilise the Nazis. A pacifist Welsh historian, a Great War flying ace, and a butterfly-collecting businessman offered the British government better intelligence on the horrifying rise of the Nazis than anyone else. Charles Spicer draws on newly discovered primary sources, shedding light on the early career of Kim Philby, Winston Churchill’s approach to appeasement, the US entry into the war and the Rudolf Hess affair.

The challenges we face are enormous. But we can still secure a positive future for our planet, and for everyone on it. In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill persuasively argues for longtermism, the idea that positively influencing the distant future is a moral priority of our time. It isn't enough to mitigate climate change or avert the next pandemic. We can ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; cultivate value pluralism; and prepare for a planet where the most sophisticated beings are digital and not human.

Immense, strange and infinite, the world of modern physics often feels impenetrable to the undiscerning eye - a jumble of muons, gluons and quarks, impossible to explain without several degrees and a research position at CERN. But it doesn't have to be this way! Allow world-renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Sean Carroll to guide you through the biggest ideas in the universe. Elegant and simple, Carroll unravels this web of theories and formulae equation by equation, getting to the heart of the truths they represent. In Space, Time and Motion, the first book of this landmark trilogy, Carroll delves into the core of classical physics. From Euclid to Einstein, Space, Time and Motion explores the ideas which revolutionised science and forever changed our understanding of our place in the cosmos.