Collection: Shop Middle Eastern

Zahra hugs her cherished teddy bear and prays that Ramadan will bring her a longed-for sister. When her bear subsequently goes missing, Zahra finds herself grappling with intense feelings of loss. Over the next few weeks, as she volunteers with her mother at a local shelter for asylum seekers, Zahra befriends a displaced child, resulting in a newfound sense of gratitude and an unexpected Ramadan blessing.

In this defiant and urgent collection, Noor Hindi navigates Arab womanhood, migration, queerness, and Palestinian identity with striking and evocative lyricism.

"This is an outstanding collection that will surely win readers over and inspire many a meal." 'ÄîPublishers Weekly "With this stunning collection of approachable Middle Eastern recipes, the author dispels the notion that Persian, Turkish, Arab, and Armenian cuisines are too complicated for home cooks. In six chapters overflowing with photos of vibrantly sauced and garnished foods, she presents small plates, breads, salads, desserts, and other dishes that can be served individually or as part of a feast. VERDICT In a word, outstanding." 'ÄîLibrary Journal, starred review "This is Ottolenghi with rocket fuel." 'ÄîThe Times "Loving Persiana." 'ÄîNigella Lawson "The loveliest cookbook I've seen in a very long time." 'ÄîDaily Mail (Ireland) "The most exciting debut cookbook of the year." 'ÄîSunday Telegraph "The most appetising book. I want to eat every page of it." 'ÄîPierre Koffman, 3 Michelin star chef "Persiana'Ä is Sabrina Ghayour's first book and it's crammed full of wonderfully cookable recipes'Ä I'd like to cook and eat everything in it'Ä They're very much geared to a modern lifestyle'Ä Unlike other Middle Eastern cookbooks, this one is easy to decipher, packed with lots of flavor and recipes are surprisingly easy to pull off." 'ÄîHuffington Post "Tehran-born Ghayour can help you load your table with incredible feasts." 'ÄîSunday Times Travel Magazine "A lovingly-written homage to the enchanting dishes of the Middle East. Sabrina Ghayour takes the reader on her magic carpet to the ancient and beautiful lands of rose-scented sherbets... and to a table of abundant feasts, and of honeyed and spiced delights. What a fantastic treasure trove of good food! Within these pages, the cook will find recipes for tagines, soups, stews, salads and plenty of sweet treats. Through the pages of Persiana, Sabrina delivers the Eastern promise in its delicious, gastronomic form. If you want to eat like an Arabian Knight, then start here... but be sure to stock up on cinnamon, cumin and coriander..." 'ÄîRaymond Blanc "Sabrina Ghayour is a phenomenal Persian chef." 'ÄîGizzi Erskine "Sabrina cooks the kind of food I love to eat: lots of flavors distilled out of love and generosity. In this book Sabrina demystifies the use of spices. The Eastern promise is definitely delivered in her book and it will have a place on the shelves of my kitchen." 'ÄîBruno Loubet

NEW IN PAPERBACK A FABULOUS COLLECTION OF RECIPES FROM ONE OF THE STRONGEST VOICES IN MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD TODAY

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK 2014

WASHINGTON POST BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

SAVEUR MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK RELEASES 2014

THE OBSERVER FOOD MONTHLY BEST NEW COOKBOOK 2014

LIBRARY JOURNAL COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

BBC GOOD FOOD MAGAZINE'S BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

DELICIOUS MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

THE TELEGRAPH BEST COOKBOOK TO READ IN 2014

THE SPECTATOR BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

A celebration of the food and flavors from the regions near the Southern and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, with over 100 recipes for modern and accessible Middle Eastern dishes, including Lamb & Sour Cherry Meatballs; Chicken, Preserved Lemon & Olive Tagine; Blood Orange & Radicchio Salad; Persian Flatbread; and Spiced Carrot, Pistachio & Coconut Cake with Rosewater Cream.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

"Nothing short of magic." --Elizabeth Acevedo, New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X

From the acclaimed poet featured on Forbes Africa's "30 Under 30" list, this powerful novel-in-verse captures one girl, caught between cultures, on an unexpected journey to face the ephemeral girl she might have been. Woven through with moments of lyrical beauty, this is a tender meditation on family, belonging, and home.

my mother meant to name me for her favorite flower
its sweetness garlands made for pretty girls
i imagine her yasmeen bright & alive
& i ache to have been born her instead


Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn't feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn't feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn't different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can't, and suddenly her only refuge is gone.

As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen--the name her parents meant to give her at birth--Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows. And the life Nima wishes were someone else's. . . is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.

Omar has to solve the mystery of his missing teacher in the third installment of this highly-illustrated middle-grade series starring a Muslim boy with a huge imagination.

Omar is going on his biggest adventure yet--a trip to Pakistan! But his excitement about the trip is interrupted by some shocking news: his amazing teacher is not coming back to school, and no one will say why.

When Omar and his friends start investigating, the hints they overhear and clues they find lead them to an alarming conclusion--it must be aliens!

Omar has a huge imagination, but saving his teacher from aliens seems far-fetched even to him. He's going to need out-of-this-world creative thinking and a huge spirit of adventure to solve this mystery!

Winner of the IACP 2019 First Book Award presented by The Julia Child Foundation

"Like Madhur Jaffrey and Marcella Hazan before her, Naz Deravian will introduce the pleasures and secrets of her mother culture's cooking to a broad audience that has no idea what it's been missing. America will not only fall in love with Persian cooking, it'll fall in love with Naz." - Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: The Four Elements of Good Cooking

Naz Deravian lays out the multi-hued canvas of a Persian meal, with 100+ recipes adapted to an American home kitchen and interspersed with Naz's celebrated essays exploring the idea of home.

At eight years old, Naz Deravian left Iran with her family during the height of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Over the following ten years, they emigrated from Iran to Rome to Vancouver, carrying with them books of Persian poetry, tiny jars of saffron threads, and always, the knowledge that home can be found in a simple, perfect pot of rice. As they traverse the world in search of a place to land, Naz's family finds comfort and familiarity in pots of hearty aash, steaming pomegranate and walnut chicken, and of course, tahdig: the crispy, golden jewels of rice that form a crust at the bottom of the pot. The best part, saved for last.

In Bottom of the Pot, Naz, now an award-winning writer and passionate home cook based in LA, opens up to us a world of fragrant rose petals and tart dried limes, music and poetry, and the bittersweet twin pulls of assimilation and nostalgia. In over 100 recipes, Naz introduces us to Persian food made from a global perspective, at home in an American kitchen.

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the author of Powers and Thrones.

For more than one thousand years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era.

Expanding the usual timeframe, Jones looks to the roots of Christian-Muslim relations in the eighth century and tracks the influence of crusading to present day. He widens the geographical focus to far-flung regions home to so-called enemies of the Church, including Spain, North Africa, southern France, and the Baltic states. By telling intimate stories of individual journeys, Jones illuminates these centuries of war not only from the perspective of popes and kings, but from Arab-Sicilian poets, Byzantine princesses, Sunni scholars, Shi'ite viziers, Mamluk slave soldiers, Mongol chieftains, and barefoot friars.

Crusading remains a rallying call to this day, but its role in the popular imagination ignores the cooperation and complicated coexistence that were just as much a feature of the period as warfare. The age-old relationships between faith, conquest, wealth, power, and trade meant that crusading was not only about fighting for the glory of God, but also, among other earthly reasons, about gold. In this richly dramatic narrative that gives voice to sources usually pushed to the margins, Dan Jones has written an authoritative survey of the holy wars with global scope and human focus.

In the years since her tragic death in a car accident at age thirty-two in 1967, Forough Farrokhzad has become a poet as iconic and influential as Lorca or Akhmatova, celebrated as a pioneer of modernist Iranian literature and as a leading figure of contemporary world literature. Farrokhzad, as Elizabeth Gray writes in the preface, "remains a beacon to artists, especially women and marginalized artists, who seek freedom in all its forms."

This thoughtfully curated, deftly translated selection of Farrokhzad's poems includes work from her whole writing life, early to late. Readers will thoroughly treasure this expansive poet of the quotidian; of longing, loss, and desire; of classical reinvention; of lexical variation and sonic beauty; of terrifying wisdom, hope, and grief.

During Israel's lengthy 2014 assault on Gaza, voices worldwide rose in stunned protest. Using numerous creative means, Palestinians and their allies bore witness to the Israeli attacks--and to the siege that has strangled Gaza ever since. Gaza Unsilenced foregrounds the words and images with which Gaza Palestinians recorded the pain, losses, and dislocations of the attacks, the continuing punishment of the siege, and their community's resilience and dignity.

The book includes original contributions from the editors themselves along with essays, reportage, images, and poetry from Gaza and elsewhere. Contributors include: Ali Abunimah, Ramzi Baroud, Diana Buttu, Belal Dabour, Chris Hedges, Rashid Khalidi, and Eman Mohammed.

Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008), recipient of France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal, the Lotus Prize, and the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom, is widely considered Palestine's most eminent poet. State of Siege was written while the poet himself was under siege in Ramallah during the Israeli invasion of 2002. An eloquent and impassioned response to political extremity, the collection was published to great acclaim in the Arab world. Munir Akash's translation, including an introduction exploring the rich mythology of these poems, presents the first book-length, bilingual edition of State of Siege to an English audience.

It's market day for Samira and her grandma! The bazaar is crowded, but this sweet pair knows how to stick together in this silly picture book set in Iran.

Mama Shamsi is off to the market, and today, Samira gets to go with her! Samira loves spending time with her grandmother, and she especially loves her chador, which Mama Shamsi wraps around herself every time they leave the house. As the pair get closer and closer to the market, Samira is worried about getting lost in the crowded streets of Tehran, until she has an idea: She can hide under her grandmother's chador. But when Mama Shamsi says no--if Samira hides under there, the pair of them will look like a strange animal! In imaginary spreads, Samira and Mama Shamsi turn into a donkey, a giraffe, a kangaroo, a turtle--hiding isn't working at all. But maybe there's some other way for Samira to stay safe with her grandma in the crowded market.

A unique collection by the Arab world's most renowned poet. In a political age, in which the struggle against external and internal oppression has become central in Arabic poetry, Nizar Qabbani has succeeded in re-establishing the vitality and perennial force of the erotic in human life. Picking up a tradition of Arabic love poetry sixteen centuries old, he has enriched it with the experience of a modern man deeply aware of the changing status of women in contemporary times, and given the most eloquent poetic expression to the imperative of woman's freedom and her right to assume control over her body and emotions. An accomplished master of the erotic, standing among the best love poets of the world, Qabbani has asserted life and joy in the face of chaos and tragedy, paying fervent homage, sustained over five decades, to woman's grace and loveliness. As such he has been able to bring equilibrium and decorum to poetry in crisis, reviving faith in the possibility of happiness and emotional fulfillment. Yet he is also moved to anger by the forces of evil around him, and the opposing poles of exaltation and rage, of agony and ecstasy, describe his unique experiment. A man of his times and of all times, he is by far the most popular poet in the Arab world.

Internationally acclaimed novelist Amos Oz grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed firsthand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism. In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of extremism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also comments on related issues--the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq--in an extended interview at the end of the book.

The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this old debate. Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute--one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise.

Fresh, insightful, and inspiring, How to Cure a Fanatic brings a new voice of sanity to the cacophony on Israeli-Palestinian relations--a voice no one can afford to ignore.

Omar and his friends are up to a new heroic adventure in the fourth installment of this highly-illustrated middle-grade series starring a Muslim boy with a huge imagination.

Is there ever a good time to tell a lie?

When his best friend Daniel messes up at school, Omar decides to take the blame to save Daniel from getting in trouble--which makes Omar feel like a total hero!

Being treated like a hero feels great, so he does it again. But then something more serious happens, and all eyes land on Omar. Uh-oh.

The principal is convinced that Omar must have done it. Will he and his friends be able to prove his innocence, or is his good reputation ruined forever?

In this wordless time-travel adventure, three children at a Passover seder visit ancient Egypt to help baby Moses find his way safely to Pharaoh's daughter.

When a family settles at the table for Passover, their dog nabs the afikomen bag (containing matzah used for the seder) and dives under the tablecloth. The children follow him and find themselves transported to ancient Egypt. There, they see baby Moses' mother and sister Miriam placing him in a reed basket. The baby's journey down the Nile is hazardous -- he encounters several obstacles along the way, including a wily crocodile. Thanks to the three children, he reaches his destination unharmed, with a piece of afikomen tucked into his basket. The children return to the seder table and, exhausted, fall asleep. But what are their parents to make of the grains of sand in the afikomen bag?

Includes an author's note about the meaning of the Passover holiday and about different afikomen traditions.

Key Text Features

author's note

explanation

illustrations

literary references

panels

sources

wordless

Correlates to the Common Core States Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.3

With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.3

Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.7

Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

"If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it."---Seymour M. Hersh

One of the most thought-provoking books ever written about the Middle East, From Beirut to Jerusalem remains vital to our understanding of this complex and volatile region of the world. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman drew upon his ten years of experience reporting from Lebanon and Israel to write this now-classic work of journalism. In a new afterword, he updates his journey with a fresh discussion of the Arab Awakenings and how they are transforming the area, and a new look at relations between Israelis and Palestinians, and Israelis and Israelis. Rich with anecdote, history, analysis, and autobiography, From Beirut to Jerusalem will continue to shape how we see the Middle East for many years to come.