Lily S Ruination

In early nineteenth century England, a woman’s worth was rarely appreciated, and among the aristocracy (the ton) that especially applied to an intelligent woman. Lady Lily Maxwell, daughter to the earl and countess of Townsend, fit this category all too well. In the first ball of her first season, Lily sought refuge from the inane talk of her counterparts and the gentlemen around her by stepping outside. Unfortunately for her, this would lead to her ruin among the ton and even in the eyes of her parents, yet she had done nothing wrong. While most women would have borne their ruination in silence, Lily resolved otherwise. Angry at the ton’s unfair treatment, she left London for the countryside where she could begin constructing her revenge. With a convenient death in the family, and a chance meeting with others equally furious with the ton, she had all the tools she needed.

Set in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, this extraordinary novel "puts a human face on the suffering inflicted by the Taliban" (San Francisco Chronicle), taking readers into the seemingly divergent lives of two couples—and depicting with compassion and exquisite details the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities of the Muslim world. Mohsen comes from a family of wealthy shopkeepers whom the Taliban has destroyed; Zunaira, his wife, exceedingly beautiful, was once a brilliant teacher and is now no longer allowed to leave her home without an escort or covering her face. Intersecting their world is Atiq, a prison keeper, a man who has sincerely adopted the Taliban ideology and struggles to keep his faith, and his wife, Musarrat, who once rescued Atiq and is now dying of sickness and despair. Desperate, exhausted Mohsen wanders through Kabul when he is surrounded by a crowd about to stone an adulterous woman. Numbed by the hysterical atmosphere and drawn into their rage, he too throws stones at the face of the condemned woman buried up to her waist. With this gesture the lives of all four protagonists move toward their destinies. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching but compassionate insight into a society that violence and hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.

"A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction."--Publisher's description.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.