Paradise Galore

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award, and the Winterset Award When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon. Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries. With Paradise Deep, award-winning novelist Michael Crummey imagines a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us.

William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn -- a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup -- and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. Woodruff had to find his childhood fun in the little free time he had available between his delivery job and school, but he never writes self-pityingly, leaving the reader to shed the tears on his behalf. At ten his mother takes him on his one and only holiday -- to Blackpool. He never wonders where they get the money to do so, only where she disappears to with strange men in the afternoons, before taking him to the funfair, pockets jingling an hour or two later. NAB END is certainly not all grime and gloom however, there's a cast of great minor characters from an unfrocked vicar to William's indomitable grandmother Bridget who lend some colour and humour -- and all against the strongly rendered social backdrop of the 1920s and 1930s.

By investigating the major changes of world history during the past five hundred years, this book provides the necessary global perspective to understand the geopolitical and geoeconomic changes facing us today. We have reached a crucial transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. The need to take a world view - which this book provides - has become acute.

This book considers the meaning of the term, considers the value and characteristics of Google Earth, and discusses the main driving forces of landscape change. Google Earth provides a means whereby one can identify changes in the landscapes of Earth over recent decades. This has been a time of great human activity, and landscapes have been transformed as a result of such factors as land use and land-cover change, climate change, the intensive harnessing of new energy sources, population pressures, and globalization. Many geologists now believe that the whole Earth System is being changed and that there is thus a need to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene. It then looks at specific landscape types, including rivers, coasts, lakes, deserts, tundra, and glaciers.

By investigating the major changes in world history during the past five hundred years, Woodruff explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both the past and the present. This extraordinary book tells of the rise and fall of empires and civilizations; it recounts the growing communality and interdependence of nations; it shows how so many problems of the contemporary world are the legacy of an unprecedented era of western domination - the end of which was hastened by the two world wars. In explaining how the world has come to be what it is, the author examines the implications surrounding the end of the cold war, the unravelling of communism in Eastern Europe, and the growing challenge of the non-western world to western superiority. It is Woodruff's belief that we have reached a crucial transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. With the shift of geopolitical and geoeconomic power to Asia, and with the growing world-wide influence of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary nationalism, the need for a global perspective has become acute. A Concise History of the Modern World encompasses the learning and the insights gleaned by the author from a life-time career as a world historian.

Noted Indian writer and polymath Ram Swarup explores the meaning of Islam through the words of the Sahih Muslim, considered by Muslims to be one of the most authoritative of the collections of "traditions" (Arabic Hadith) about the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Like the Koran, these traditions are believed to be divinely revealed by Allah and they complement the verses of the Koran, in many cases expanding upon them and explaining the context of their revelation. As Swarup notes in his introduction, to Muslims the Hadith literature represents the Koran in action, stories of "revelation made concrete in the life of the Prophet." Among the orthodox they are considered as sacred as the Koran itself.Swarup is plainly skeptical of the claim that the Hadith literature is divinely inspired. In the introduction he says, "The Prophet is caught as it were in the ordinary acts of his life - sleeping, eating, mating, praying, hating, dispensing justice, planning expeditions and revenge against his enemies. The picture that emerges is hardly flattering. . . . One is . . . left to wonder how the believers, generation after generation, could have found this story so inspiring. The answer is that the believers are conditioned to look at the whole thing through the eyes of faith. To them morality derives from the Prophet''s actions. . . .his actions determine and define morality."The Sahih Muslim, a massive work consisting of 7,190 traditions divided into 1,243 chapters, is hardly accessible to the average reader; so Swarup quotes representative selections that touch upon the main tenets of Islam: faith, purification, prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, marriage and divorce, crime and punishment, religious wars (jihad), paradise, hell, repentance, and many other features of the religion.To non-Muslims this work provides many insights into the mindset of the average Muslim who is raised on these traditions about Muhammad. It also underscores the gulf that exists between the sanctum of orthodox Islam and an increasingly secularized Westernized world.

Because... is a compulsive search to look within and find answers. We are generally lost behind the apathy of our own laid cobwebs. Our illusions go beyond the layers of natural thinking and result in a million unanswered questions. Under this thick dust, the mind is our own employee and we define its purpose to work for us in channeled directions. With a sensitive approach towards mental well-being, Because articulates positive thinking with creative reads and poetic expressions giving us meaningful takeaways. It captures a release of different moods with sheer optimism. It asserts on prudent lessons of various experiences and helps us to reach logical ends. An engaging read, this book brings an extraordinary feeling of happiness and internal satisfaction.