The Season Of Migration

'SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH-An Arabian Nights in reverse, enclosing a pithy moral about international misconceptions and delusions. The brilliant student of an earlier generation returns to his Sudanese village; obsession with the mysterious West and a desire to bite the hand that has half-fed him, has led him to London and the beds of women with similar obsessions about the mysterious East. He kills them at the point of ecstasy and the Occident, in its turn, destroys him. Powerfully and poetically written and splendidly translated by Denys Johnson-Davies.' Observer

The lyrically told story of one of the world's greatest artists finding his true calling Though Vincent van Gogh is one of the most popular painters of all time, we know very little about a ten-month period in the painter's youth when he and his brother, Theo, broke off all contact. In The Season of Migration, Nellie Hermann conjures this period in a profoundly imaginative, original, and heartbreaking vision of Van Gogh's early years, before he became the artist we know today. In December 1878, Vincent van Gogh arrives in the coal-mining village of Petit Wasmes in the Borinage region of Belgium, a blasted and hopeless landscape of hovels and slag heaps and mining machinery. Not yet the artist he is destined to become, Vincent arrives as an ersatz preacher, barely sanctioned by church authorities but ordained in his own mind and heart by a desperate and mistaken spiritual vocation. But what Vincent experiences in the Borinage will change him. Coming to preach a useless gospel he thought he knew and believed, he learns about love, suffering, and beauty, ultimately coming to see the world anew and finding the divine not in religion but in our fallen human world. In startlingly beautiful and powerful language, Hermann transforms our understanding of Van Gogh and the redemptive power of art.

A close look at one season in one key site that reveals the amazing science and magic of spring bird migration, and the perils of human encroachment. Every spring, billions of birds sweep north, driven by ancient instincts to return to their breeding grounds. This vast parade often goes unnoticed, except in a few places where these small travelers concentrate in large numbers. One such place is along Lake Erie in northwestern Ohio. There, the peak of spring migration is so spectacular that it attracts bird watchers from around the globe, culminating in one of the world’s biggest birding festivals. Millions of winged migrants pass through the region, some traveling thousands of miles, performing epic feats of endurance and navigating with stunning accuracy. Now climate change threatens to disrupt patterns of migration and the delicate balance between birds, seasons, and habitats. But wind farms—popular as green energy sources—can be disastrous for birds if built in the wrong places. This is a fascinating and urgent study of the complex issues that affect bird migration.

A striking first novel about the dark side of the American Dream Suzy Park is a twenty-nine-year-old Korean American interpreter for the New York City court system. Young, attractive, and achingly alone, she makes a startling and ominous discovery during one court case that forever alters her family's history. Five years prior, her parents--hardworking greengrocers who forfeited personal happiness for their children's gain--were brutally murdered in an apparent robbery of their fruit and vegetable stand. Or so Suzy believed. But the glint of a new lead entices Suzy into the dangerous Korean underworld, and ultimately reveals the mystery of her parents' homicide. An auspicious debut about the myth of the model Asian citizen, The Interpreter traverses the distance between old worlds and new, poverty and privilege, language and understanding.

By the celebrated author of A Dream in Polar Fog, a collection of the myths and stories of Yuri Rytkheu’s own family that is at once a moving history of the Chukchi people who inhabit the northern shores of the Bering Sea and a beautiful cautionary tale rife with conflict, human drama, and humor. We meet fantastic characters: Nau, the mother of the human race; Rau, her half-whale husband; and Rytkheu’s own grandfather, fated to be an intrepid traveler, far-ranging whaler, living ethnographic exhibit, and the last shaman of Uelen. The Chukchi Bible moves through vast Arctic tundra, sea, and sky – and to places deep within ourselves—introducing readers, in vivid prose, to an extraordinary mythology and a resilient people.

“This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation. The novel traces the lives and loves of three men—preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim—whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson Rajan—who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction—accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past. With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa. “Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.” —The Gazette “A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Kimani’s novel has an impressive breadth and scope.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.” —Publishers Weekly “Lyrical and powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The Wedding of Zein” unfolds in the same village on the upper Nile where Tayeb Salih’s tragic masterpiece Season of Migration to the North is set. Here, however, the story that emerges through the overlapping, sometimes contradictory voices of the villagers is comic. Zein is the village idiot, and everyone in the village is dumbfounded when the news goes around that he will be getting married—Zein the freak, Zein who burst into laughter the moment he was born and has kept women and children laughing ever since, Zein who lost all his teeth at six and whose face is completely hairless, Zein married at last? Zein’s particular role in the life of the village has been the peculiar one of falling in love again and again with girls who promptly marry another man. It would be unheard of for him to get married himself. In Tayeb Salih’s wonderfully agile telling, the story of how this miracle came to be is one that engages the tensions that exist in the village, or indeed in any community: tensions between the devout and the profane, the poor and the propertied, the modern and the traditional. In the end, however, Zein’s ridiculous good luck augurs an ultimate reconciliation, opening a prospect of a world made whole. Salih’s classic novella appears here with two of his finest short stories, “The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid” and “A Handful of Dates.”

How a search for an exotic bird became a quest for love, forgiveness, and a new life. Birds, especially the ibis, have always fascinated Elize--that's why she became an ornithologist. But when her boss at the private Texas coastal institute where she's spent her career gives away her expected promotion, Elize flees to Morocco to lick her wounds and write a research paper that will prove her worth and secure her professional future. Morocco, with its impressive migration season, exotic flavors, and unwritten rules, is altogether foreign, even if many of the birds are familiar. After a brush with danger, Elize finds herself in Marrakesh, dependent on Erik, a sexy, mysterious stranger who makes her feel alive while opening her eyes to a new, intriguing world. After encountering her ornithology colleagues, who remind Elize of every bad professional choice and missed opportunity, she vows to find the Northern Bald Ibis--an endangered bird few have seen--and impress everyone. She and Erik journey from coastal paradise to remote desert mountains in search of the birds. Through misadventure, Elize is forced to trust an unknown culture, and through tragedy, she realizes that love and forgiveness are attainable. But first she must surrender her past and its pain to embrace her future and fly free.