By The Rivers Of Babylon

Lod Airport, Israel: Two Concorde jets take off for a U.N. conference that will finally bring peace to the Middle East. Covered by F-14 fighters, accompanied by security men, the planes carry warriors, pacifists, lovers, enemies, dignitaries -- and a bomb planted by a terrorist mastermind. Suddenly they're forced to crash-land at an ancient desert site. Here, with only a handful of weapons, the men and women of the peace mission must make a desperate stand against an army of crack Palestinian commandos -- while the Israeli authorities desperately attempt a rescue mission. In a land of blood and tears, in a windswept place called Babylon, it will be a battle of bullets and courage, and a war to the last death.

The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods-this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons-it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden- they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

German poet Heinrich Heine was bedridden with a debilitating illness for the last eight years of his life, during which time he reassessed many of his previous views on life. By the Rivers of Babylon examines the changes in his thinking about history, philosophy, and religion during that period and shows how those changes are reflected in his later poetry. Roger Cook offers an analysis of Heine's vehement renunciation of the Hegelian ideas that had shaped his earlier conception of history. Refuting accepted opinions that this shift in thought was a displaced opposition to social developments, Cook contends that these late writings represent Heine's consistent rejection of idealist philosophy and reveal Heine's new understanding of poetry's role as a transmitter of myth. Cook shows how Heine transcended the boundaries of European culture and Judeo-Christian religion by aligning his work with alternative cultures on the margins of society.

It is 1989. Across Central Europe, socalism is crumbling, and robber capitalism is being born. Rivers of Babylon tells this story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and secret policemen have infiltrated a new democracy, through the eyes of Racz, sociopathic gangster and idiot of genius. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pist'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem.

Rowing upon the Tigris River to enjoy a summer campfire on the tiny islands that emerged every summer, teenaged Joseph Samuels never could have imagined that these waters would soon become his only hope for freedom. At the age of 19, he was forced to leave his family behind as he smuggled out of Iraq in the secret hold of a Basra riverboat to escape the violent and repressive anti-Semitism that, over the next few years, would spell the end of the two-millennium old Iraqi Jewish community. Beyond the Rivers of Babylon follows Joe's remarkable journey, from his colorful childhood in the Old Jewish Quarter of Baghdad, to his life-altering service in the Israeli Navy, to starting a family and building a real estate empire in Montreal and Los Angeles. Blessed with a remarkably vivid memory and a keen ability to look inward, Joe paints a sensory landscape of a home that is no more, and in the process imparts the lessons of a life lived to its fullest.

"Culled from various books, journals, and festschrifts, the most important essays by Sara Japhet on the biblical restoration period and the books of Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles appear in this accessible collection."--BOOK JACKET.

The second novel in the 'Rivers of Babylon' trilogy, translated from the Slovak, this outrageous black satire centres on a 'wooden village' of kiosks erected around a city hotel. It follows the post-communist rise of a mafia thug to be the leading 'businessman' of Bratislava, and of a perverted car-park attendant to the status of a porn-film scriptwriter, while others sink to pimping, robbing and baby-trafficking. Into this world, risking his life, comes a naive Slovak-American entrepreneur. 'Rivers of Babylon 1' was praised by William Boyd: "A tremendous novel, powered by an uncompromising ferocious energy and exhibiting a brutally dark sense of humour that is both ruthless and exhilarating. An amazing find.Ó The power is fully sustained in this novel.

This collection of 25 sermons given by Kaj Munk reveal his increasing criticism of the German occupation that began in April 1940. His "Underground Sermons" were printed and distributed "illegally" through the Danish underground. The Germans obtained a court order for their confiscation, but only managed to get 10 copies of the 26,500 copies printed on May 23, 1943. By December, 1943, it was illegal for Kaj Munk to preach anywhere. On December 5, 1943, Kaj Munk sat discretely in the Copenhagen Cathedral, and at a signal from the pastor ascended to the pulpit, gave his sermon, and was then escorted quickly and safely out of the church. The last sermon in this book was given on New Year's day, just three days before he was killed by the German occupation forces on January 4, 1944. Kaj Munk was a beacon of light in Denmark's darkest hour and his influence continues to this day.