Showing results by narrator "Mozhan Marno" in All Categories

All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel - gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight - and tradition seeks to clip her wings.

After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him.

Lyndsey was once a top handler in the Moscow Field Station, where she was known as the "human lie detector" and praised for recruiting some of the most senior Russian officials. But now, three Russian assets have been exposed - including one of her own - and the CIA is convinced there's a mole in the department. With years of work in question and lives on the line, Lyndsey is thrown back into life at the agency, this time tracing the steps of those closest to her.

From best-selling author Jon Krakauer, a stark, powerful, meticulously reported narrative about a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana - stories that illuminate the human drama behind the national plague of campus rape.

When Alice Hale leaves a career to become a writer and follows her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. But when she finds a vintage cookbook buried in the basement, she becomes captivated by its previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she realises that within the pages Nellie left clues about her life. Soon Alice learns that while a baked Alaska may seem harmless, Nellie's secrets may have been anything but.

In 1632, the Emperor of Hindustan, Shah Jahan, overwhelmed with grief over the death of his beloved wife, Mumatz Mahal, commissioned the building of a grand mausoleum to symbolize the greatness of their love. The story surrounding the construction of the Taj Mahal occurs, however, against a scrim of fratricidal war, murderous rebellion, unimaginable wealth, and, not least of all, religious fundamentalism ruthlessly opposing tolerance and coexistence between the disparate peoples in the empire.

An anthology of verse by women poets writing in Persian, most of whom have never been translated into English before, from acclaimed scholar and translator Dick Davis. From Rabe'eh in the 10th century to Fatemeh Ekhtesari in the 21st, the women poets found in The Mirror of My Heart write across the millennium on such universal topics as marriage, children, political climate, death, and emancipation, recreating life from hundreds of years ago that is strikingly similar to our own today and giving insight into their experiences as women.

During a vacation in the Caribbean, 15-year old Kate Huntley's father, a prominent U.S. scientist, is murdered before her eyes. For the next 10 years Kate grows up alone in Haiti, one of the most dangerous and poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Not a day goes by that she doesn't think of her father. Kate pushes herself to become stronger, mentally and physically. Every day is a struggle for survival. And yet she lives for only one reason ... revenge.

Taking her cue from a challenge thrown to her at a reading, Nafisi energetically responds to those who say fiction has nothing to teach us today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favourite novels, she invites us to join her as citizens of her Republic of Imagination, a country where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy, and the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.

The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers.

Mori Taheripour brings her more-than-15 years of experience teaching negotiation to this audiobook, shattering conventional thought about what makes a good negotiator - namely, being aggressive and unemotional. She has found that the best negotiators are empathetic, curious and present. The essence of bargaining isn't the transaction but rather the conversation and human connection. With eye-opening and empowering stories throughout, Bring Yourself helps listeners gain the confidence they need to achieve their goals in work and in life.

Forty years old and suddenly motherless, Blanca is left shocked and rudderless by the death of the most important person in her life. To deal with her dizzying grief and confusion, Blanca turns to her dearest friends, her closest family, a change of scenery, and sex. Leaving Barcelona behind, she returns to her mother’s former home in Cadaqués on the coast, accompanied by her two sons, two ex-husbands, and two best friends, with plans to meet her married lover.

An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays behind. Over 20 years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer they are apart, the more their lives diverge, but also the more each comes to need the other's wisdom and, ultimately, rescue.

The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day. In 1979, seemingly overnight - moving at a clip some 30 years faster than the rest of the world - Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be.

In this richly imagined dystopic future brought by global warming, mass human migrations are constant, water and food are scarce, new babies are illegal, and the disintegrating society is run by corporates who feed the people a steady diet of "pharma" to keep them happy. Usually, 17-year-old Nat doesn't let it get her down too much: this, after all, is the life she's used to; and though she is nostalgic for the ancient world she's heard about, she's also realistic, cheerful, and tough. But now her family have come to Hawaii for their parents' Final Week.

While held in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, Azar gives birth to a baby girl whom she fears she cannot keep. Arash, a fellow revolutionary, makes his daughter a bracelet of date stones, knowing it will be all she has to remember him by. Leila has to choose between fleeing Iran with her lover or staying to care for the children of her imprisoned sisters. And Forugh must grow up in the shadow of her parent's deaths. Courageous, heart-wrenching and beautifully written, Children of the Jacaranda Tree is a novel about family, sacrifice, and the search for a better world.

Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.

In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father's deathbed. As the family gathers, stories begin to unfold: Osama's grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching tales are interwoven with classic stories of the Middle East. Here are Abraham and Isaac; Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the beautiful Fatima; Baybars, the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders; and a host of mischievous imps.

Wholesome, intelligent, and enviably slender, Julie Larimore has been the spokesperson for Killer Body Weight Loss for almost seven years. Then suddenly she vanishes. While fighting off the media frenzy that surrounds Julie's disappearance, the company's maverick founder, Bobby Warren, starts his search for a new spokesmodel for Killer Body and finds the field is wide open.

After the murders of the king and queen, the island empire of Crosspointe is on the verge of chaos. The ruthless Lord Chancellor has taken the throne and made slaves of most of the royal family. Now, in order to save the country they love, the king’s heirs are determined to rally whatever allies they have left and overthrow the Lord Chancellor - before the Jutras invade.