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The Good Immigrant

Keep out, Britain is full up.

 

Or so goes the narrative of immigration in this country all too often. We are a country in flux – our media condemns refugees one day, sheds tears over them the next. Our narrative around immigration is built on falsehoods, stereotypes and anxieties about the diminishing sense of what Britishness means.

Meanwhile, we’re told that we live in a multicultural melting pot, that we’re post-racial. Yet, studies show that throughout the UK, people from BAME groups are much more likely to be in poverty (with an income of less than 60 per cent of the median household income) than white British people (Institute Of Race Relations). It’s a hard time to be an immigrant, or the child of one, or even the grandchild of one.

 

Unless you have managed to transcend into popular culture, like Mo Farah, Nadya Hussain or the other ‘good immigrants’ out there. It’s a bad time to be a bad immigrant. My conversation with Musa Okwonga about this led to the very generation of this collection. I said I wished there was a book of essays by good immigrants. He reminded of the Chinua Achebe quote, if you don’t like the story, write your own.

 

The Good Immigrant brings together fifteen emerging British black, Asian and minority ethnic writers, poets, journalists and artists. In these fifteen essays about race and immigration, they paint a picture of what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that wants you, doesn’t want you, doesn’t accept you, needs you for its equality monitoring forms and would prefer you if you won a major reality show competition.

 

The book will explore why we come here, why we stay, what it means for our identity if we’re mixed race, where our place is in the world if we’re unwelcome in the UK, and what effects this has on the education system. By examining popular culture, family, profession and the arts, we will be looking at diversity and questioning what this concept even means anymore. The essays are poignant, challenging, funny, sad, heartbreaking, polemic, angry, weary, and, most importantly, from an emerging generation of BAME writers. 



The Lieutenant of Inishmore

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a black comedy by Martin McDonagh, in which the 'mad' leader of an Irish National Liberation Army splinter group discovers that his cat has been killed. It has been produced twice in the West End and on Broadway, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. In 2014, The Lieutenant of Inishmore was ranked in The Daily Telegraph as one of the 15 greatest plays ever written.

 

 

 


The Looting Machine
Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systemic Theft of Africa's Wealth

Overseas Press Club Award Winner 2016

A shocking investigative journey into the way the resource trade wreaks havoc on Africa, ‘The Looting Machine’ explores the dark underbelly of the global economy.

‘The Looting Machine’ is a searing exposé of the global web of traders, bankers, middlemen, despots and corporate raiders that is pillaging Africa’s vast natural wealth. From the killing fields of Congo to the crude-slicked creeks of Nigeria, a great endowment of oil, diamonds, copper, iron, gold and coltan has become a curse that condemns millions to poverty, violence and oppression. That curse is no accident. This gripping investigative journey takes us into the shadows of the world economy, where secretive networks conspire with Africa’s kleptocrats to bleed the continent dry. And like their victims, the beneficiaries of this grand looting have names.


The New Left Reader

Newspaper headlines define the New Left through its dramatic actions: campus revolts, black rebellions, draft resistance, antiwar protests, and the metamorphosis of the political malaise of the Fifties into a new concept of revolution in the Sixties.Yet the New Left has its philosophical and political roots. Carl Oglesby, a leading figure in what has come to be called "the Move-ment," has assembled the first comprehensive anthology of seminal writings of the New Left. Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, and other influential political analysts are repre-sented, and the works of New Left heroes Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Castro, and Huey Newton are here, as well. The younger activists speak through the writings of European New Leftists Rudi Dutschke and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and through moving accounts of the 1968 French uprising and other European revolts.The New Left Reader is a book for anyone who wishes to understand the complex thought behind actions that are affecting the entire world.


The New Warlords
From the Gulf war to the recolonisation of the Middle East

The New Warlords is a collection of articles from the newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and brings together a concise and complete history of the conflicts in Iraq, Kurdistan and Palestine. The book follows not only the involvment of the apparently warring states i.e. Palestine and Iraq, but also charts the interference from the British Labour governemts of particular years.

 


The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.


The Prophet

A worldwide best-seller since its date of original publication in 1923, The Prophet has become a token of free thought and intellectual betterment across many generations of readers. This unique and timeless classic is composed of 28 prose poetry fables, each examining a different facet of the human experience. A treasure worth holding close, The Prophet is an unforgettable book of poems worth savoring.

The Prophet serves as an intricate examination of the world through the eyes of prophet Almustafa on his way back to his native country after having been in exile for the past twelve years. On the ship carrying him home, Almustafa becomes engulfed in conversation with various passengers on board. Each conversation differs from the last while all providing valuable experiences for Almustafa. Providing insight, clarity, and depth, Almustafa’s musings on each subject make way for the ways in which one can better learn to understand the levels of deep human emotion. From the intricacies of human thought, and circumstance, Gibran’s words have carried with them a certain meditative and instructive examination of what it feels like to be human. With honorable mentions from celebrity authors and poets, the importance of reading The Prophet cannot be overstated. An absolute must-read for anyone seeking emotional enlightenment, guidance, or human insight. With each poem and line varying in length and explanation, The Prophet is as topical today as it was when it was first published.


The Question of Palestine

This original and deeply provocative book was the first to make Palestine the subject of a serious debate—one that remains as critical as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and an exile's passion (he is Palestinian by birth and has been a member of the Palestine National Council), Edward W. Said traces the fatal collision between two peoples in the Middle East and its repercussions in the lives of both the occupier and the occupied—as well as in the conscience of the West. He has now updated this landmark work to portray the changed status of Palestine and its people in light of such developments as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the intifada, the Gulf War, and the ongoing Middle East peace initiative.

For anyone interested in this region and its future, The Question of Palestine remains the most useful and authoritative account available.


The Qur'an
English Translation

'Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful one who taught by the pen, who taught man what he did not know.'

The Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be the word of God, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago. It is the supreme authority in Islam and the living source of all Islamic teaching; it is a sacred text and a book of guidance, that sets out the creed, rituals, ethics, and laws of the Islamic religion. It has been one of the most influential books in the history of literature. Recognized as the greatest literary masterpiece in Arabic, it has nevertheless remained difficult to understand in its English translations. This new translation is written in a contemporary idiom that remains faithful to the original, making it easy to read while retaining its powers of eloquence. Archaisms and cryptic language are avoided, and the Arabic meaning preserved by respecting the context of the discourse. The message of the Qur'an was directly addressed to all people regardless of class, gender, or age, and this translation is equally accessible to everyone.

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