Author: Ann Patchett File Type: mobi Amazon.com ReviewIn an unnamed South American country, a world-renowned soprano sings at a birthday party in honor of a visiting Japanese industrial titan. His hosts hope that Mr. Hosokawa can be persuaded to build a factory in their Third World backwater. Alas, in the opening sequence, just as the accompanist kisses the soprano, a ragtag band of 18 terrorists enters the vice-presidential mansion through the air conditioning ducts. Their quarry is the president, who has unfortunately stayed home to watch a favorite soap opera. And thus, from the beginning, things go awry.Among the hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, the American soprano, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Reuben Iglesias, the diminutive and gracious vice president, quickly gets sideways of the kidnappers, who have no interest in him whatsoever. Meanwhile, a Swiss Red Cross negotiator named Joachim Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.With the omniscience of magic realism, Ann Patchett flits in and out of the hearts and psyches of hostage and terrorist alike, and in doing so reveals a profound, shared humanity. Her voice is suitably lyrical, melodic, full of warmth and compassion. Hearing opera sung live for the first time, a young priest reflects blockquoteNever had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that Gods own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven. blockquoteJoined by no common language except music, the 58 international hostages and their captors forge unexpected bonds. Time stands still, priorities rearrange themselves. Ultimately, of course, something has to give, even in a novel so imbued with the rich imaginative potential of magic realism. But in a fractious world, Bel Canto remains a gentle reminder of the transcendence of beauty and love. --Victoria JenkinsFrom Library JournalLucky Mr. Hosokawa. The well-connected Japanese businessman, now in an unnamed South American country on yet another job, is having a very special birthday party. At the home of the countrys vice president, opera singer Roxane Cos will be performing for him and his guests. But whats this? Armed men invading the premises? These ragtag revolutionaries are looking for the president and disappointed that he is not there, but that doesnt stop them from holding the party goers hostage. What happens after that was, for this reviewer, a story that failed to ignite. Patchett (The Patron Saint of Liars) generates little tension as she moves her players around the board, and one is disappointed that there is little reflection about the head-on clash of art and life. This book is getting a big promotional pitch, however, so libraries may want to consider.- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author: E. Benjamin Skinner File Type: epub Two hundred years after Parliament passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, over 27 million people worldwide languish in slavery, forced to work, under threat of violence, for no pay. In Africa, hundreds of thousands are considered chattel, while on the Indian subcontinent millions languish in generational debt bondage. Across the globe, women and children, sold for sex and labour, are already the second most lucrative commodity for organised crime. Through eviscerating narrative, A Crime So Monstrous paints a stark picture of modern slavery. Skinner infiltrates trafficking networks and slave sales on four continents, exposing a flesh trade never before portrayed with such vivid detail. From mega-harems in Khartoum to illicit brothels in Bucharest, from slave quarries in India to urban child markets in Haiti, he lays bare a parallel universe where lives are bought, sold, used and discarded. The personal stories related here are heartbreaking but in the midst of tragedy Skinner also discovered a quiet dignity that leads some to resist and aspire to freedom. He bears witness for them and for the millions that are held in the shadows - all victims of what is the greatest human-rights challenge facing our generation.

Author: Stephen Theron File Type: pdf This book, the third of four in a series, coming after New Hegelian Essays, demonstrating how Hegels philosophy perfects the rational presentation of any and all religious representation, and its successor From Narrative to Necessity, showing the coincidence of the doctrines of Trinity, Creation and Incarnation with the humanist ideal, expounds religion, and Christianity in particular, as continuous unfolding in history of Reasons Developing Self-Revelation, latterly in the crucible of Absolute Idealism, which is philosophy proper. A fourth book, on Hegels contribution to the reconciliation of cultures, explores the implications of Hegels thought for any possible ecumenism. Meanwhile, this third book opens with three chapters freeing Christian orthodoxy from all figurative representation, showing the connection with Hegels treatment of the logical forms under the heading of The Subjective Notion (see New Hegelian Essays, chapter seventeen) in his system of Logic. The book then progresses through several chapters of Hegelian Logic and metaphysics, concerning concepts of the self-explanatory, the one and the many, absolute simplicity, and coming, among other related topics, to a discussion of evolution philosophically viewed in relation to our knowledge and its possibility. By this route we come to a final question and chapter, Christianity without (or within) God? As God has to be self-determining, he cannot be given any finite name, but is the Absolute (loosed from all things, literally), or Pure Act, which is also, Idealism demonstrates, the Absolute Idea specifically. It follows that Idea adds no qualification to Absolute, since there is, by its concept, nothing outside of the latter, not even we ourselves. We are images and signs thereof, differentiated from it but not other than it. **

Author: David Waines File Type: pdf Ibn Battuta was, without doubt, one of the worlds truly great travellers. Born in 14th century Morocco, and a contemporary of Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta has left us an account in his own words of his remarkable journeysthroughout the Islamic world and beyond journeys punctuated by adventure and peril, and stretching fromhis home in Tangiers to Zaytun in faraway China. Whether sojourning in Delhi and the Maldives, wandering through the mazy streets of Cairo and Damascus, or contesting with pirates and shipwreck, the indefatigable Ibn Battuta brings to vivid life a medieval world brimming with marvel and mystery. Carefully observing the great diversity of civilizations which he encountered, Ibn Battuta exhibits an omnivorous interest in such matters as food and drink, religious differences (between Christians, Hindus and Shia Muslims), ideas about purity and impurity, disease, women and sex. Recounting the many miracles which its author claims to have experienced personally, his al-rihla or Travelogue is a fascinating mosaic of mysticism and reportage offering a prototype magic realism. David Waines discusses the subtleties of the al-rihla, revealing all the wonders of Ibn Battutas world to the modern reader. This is a gripping treatment of the life and times of one of historys most daring, and at the same time most human, discoverers.