Zoya's Story

Author: John Follain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062037293
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Kabul was always more beautiful in the snow. Even the piles of rotting rubbish in my street, the only source of food for the scrawny chickens and goats that our neighbors kept outside their mud houses, looked beautiful to me after the snow had covered them in white during the long night. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people experience in a lifetime. Born in a land ravaged by war, she was robbed of her parents when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization that challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she took destiny into her own hands, joining a dangerous, clandestine war to save her nation. Direct and unsentimental, Zoya vividly brings to life the realities of growing up in a Muslim culture, the terror of living in a perpetual war zone, the pain of losing those she has loved, the horrors of a woman’s life under the Taliban, and the discovered healing and transformation that lead her on a path of resistance.

Zoya

Author: Danielle Steel
Publisher: Dell
ISBN: 0307567060
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Book Description
Against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and World War I Europe, Zoya, young cousin to the Tsar, flees St. Petersburg to Paris to find safety. Her entire world forever changed, she faces hard times and joins the Ballet Russe in Paris. And then, when life is kind to her, Zoya moves on to a new and glittering life in New York. The days of ease are all too brief as the Depression strikes, and she loses everything yet again. It is her career, and the man she meets in the course of it, which ultimately save her, as she rebuilds her life through the war years and beyond. And it is her family that comes to mean everything to her. From the roaring twenties to the 1980's, Zoya remains a rare and spirited woman whose legacy will live on.

Little Daughter

Author: Zoya Phan
Publisher: Pocket Books
ISBN: 9781847394262
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Zoya Phan was born in the remote jungles of Burma, to the Karen ethnic group. For decades the Karen have been under attack from Burma's military junta; Zoya's mother was a guerrilla soldier, her father a freedom activist. She lived in a bamboo hut on stilts by the Moei River; she hunted for edible fungi with her much-loved adopted brother, Say Say. Many Karen are Christian or Buddhist, but Zoya's parents were animist, venerating the spirits of forest, river and moon. Her early years were blissfully removed from the war. At the age of fourteen, however, Zoya's childhood was shattered as the Burmese army attacked. With their house in flames, Zoya and her family fled. So began two terrible years of running from guns, as Zoya joined thousands of refugees hiding in the jungle. Her family scattered, Zoya sought sanctuary across the border in a Thai refugee camp. Conditions in the camp were difficult, and Zoya now had to care for her ailing mother. Zoya, a gifted pupil, was eventually able to escape, first to Bangkok and then, with her enemies still pursuing her, in 2004 she fled to the UK and claimed asylum. The following year, at a 'free Burma' march, she was plucked from the crowd to appear on the BBC, the first of countless interviews with the world's media. She became the face of a nation enslaved, rubbing shoulders with presidents and film stars. By turns uplifting, tragic and entirely gripping, this is the extraordinary true story of the girl from the jungle who became an icon of a suffering land.

Things We Left Unsaid

Author: Zoya Pirzad
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780740840
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
A heartwarming and humorous insight into the hopes and aspirations of Iranians in the years that led up to the Islamic Revolution Deep in an Iranian suburb, made rich by the booming oil industry, Clarice Ayvazian lives a comfortable life surrounded by the gentle bickering of her children and her gossiping friends and relatives. Happy being at the heart of her family, she devotes herself to their every need. But when an enigmatic Armenian family move in across the street, something begins to gnaw at Clarice's contentment: a feeling that there may be more to life – and to her – than this. Dizzy with the sweltering heat and simmering emotions, Clarice begins to feel herself come alive to possibilities previously unimaginable. Set in Iran prior to the Islamic revolution, Zoya Pirzad's award-winning novel is perfect for fans of Anne Tyler, crafting an intimate portrait of family life – its joys and its compromises – and how we find a happiness that endures.

Undaunted

Author: Zoya Phan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439134731
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Once a royal kingdom and then part of the British Empire, Burma long held sway in the Western imagination as a mythic place of great beauty. In recent times, Burma has been torn apart and isolated by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Now, Zoya of the, a young member ofthe Karen tribe in Burma, bravely comes forward with her astonishingly vivid story of growing up in the idyllic green mansions of the jungle, and her violent displacement by the military junta that has controlled the country for almost a half century. This same cadre has also relentlessly hunted Zoya and her family across borders and continents. Undaunted tells of Zoya’s riveting adventures, from her unusual childhood in a fascinating remote culture, to her years on the run, to her emergence as an activist icon. Named for a courageous Russian freedom fighter of World War II, Zoya was fourteen when Burmese aircraft bombed her peaceful village, forcing her and her family to flee through the jungles to a refugee camp just over the border in Thailand. After being trapped in refugee camps for years in poverty and despair, her family scattered: as her father became more deeply involved in the struggle for freedom, Zoya and her sister left their mother in the camp to go to a college in Bangkok to which they had won scholarships. But even as she attended classes, Zoya, the girl from the jungle, had to dodge police and assume an urban disguise, as she was technically an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation. Although, following graduation, she obtained a comfortable job with a major communications company in Bangkok, Zoya felt called back to Burma to help her mother and her people, millions of whom still have to live on the run today in order to survive—in fact, more villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma than in Darfur, Sudan. After a plot to kill her was uncovered, in 2004 Zoya escaped to the United Kingdom, where she began speaking at political conferences and demonstrations—a mission made all the more vital by her father’s assassination in 2008 by agents of the Burmese regime. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zoya has become a powerful spokesperson against oppressors, undaunted by dangers posed to her life. Zoya’s love of her people, their land, and their way of life fuels her determination to survive, and in Undaunted she hauntingly brings to life a lost culture and world, putting faces to the stories of the numberless innocent victims of Burma’s military

Invitation to a Bonfire

Author: Adrienne Celt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408895161
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
'At once a gripping psychological thriller and a finely crafted work of literature ... An exhibition of stylistic virtuosity, a pyrotechnic display of fine writing' Financial Times 'Part psychological thriller and part literary puzzle' Grazia Zoya Andropova, a young Russian refugee, finds herself in an elite New Jersey boarding school. Having lost her family, her home and her sense of purpose, Zoya struggles to belong, a task made more difficult by her new country's paranoia about Soviet spies. When she meets charismatic fellow Russian émigré Leo Orlov – whose books Zoya has obsessed over for years – everything seems to change. But she soon discovers that Leo is bound by the sinister orchestrations of his brilliant wife, Vera, and that their relationship is far more complex than Zoya could ever have imagined.

Ravage

Author: Tillie Cole
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1250086302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
Is finding one's true love worth committing the greatest sacrifice of all? Taken as a teen, prisoner 194 was stripped of his name and freewill, meticulously honed to be a ruthless machine. Even as he tries to fight his captors hold on him he knows that obedience is the only way to save his sister, who is the one person that keeps him from turning into a monster. As a young girl Zoya Kostava barely escaped the brutal attack that killed her entire family. Now twenty five she lives in secrecy. That is until she hears her brother also survived and is living with their greatest enemy. Zoya risks her safety and anonymity to find the brother she thought dead and is captured by a beautiful, brutal man. A man who both captivates and scares her, in him she sees a soul as lost as her own. They both have so much to lose will they be able to save each other...and survive.

Life Stories

Author: Maureen O'Connor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610691466
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 768

Book Description
Memoirs, autobiographies, and diaries represent the most personal and most intimate of genres, as well as one of the most abundant and popular. Gain new understanding and better serve your readers with this detailed genre guide to nearly 700 titles that also includes notes on more than 2,800 read-alike and other related titles. The popularity of this body of literature has grown in recent years, and it has also diversified in terms of the types of stories being told—and persons telling them. In the past, readers' advisors have depended on access by names or Dewey classifications and subjects to help readers find autobiographies they will enjoy. This guide offers an alternative, organizing the literature according to popular genres, subgenres, and themes that reflect common reading interests. Describing titles that range from travel and adventure classics and celebrity autobiographies to foodie memoirs and environmental reads, Life Stories: A Guide to Reading Interests in Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Diaries presents a unique overview of the genre that specifically addresses the needs of readers' advisors and others who work with readers in finding books.

Space Between Us

Author: Zoya Pirzad
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780742371
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
Love, family and religion clash in the unforgettable novel from the internationally acclaimed author of Things We Left Unsaid, set in contemporary Iran In a small town on the edge of the Caspian Sea, Edmond Lazarian and his best friend Tahereh pass their days playing together, drifting between the delights of beachcombing and the joys of the sherbet shop. Although Edmond is Armenian and Tahereh is the Muslim daughter of the school’s janitor, they remain blissfully unaware of the disquiet that ripples the calm surface of their close-knit community. But years later, when Edmond’s daughter chooses to marry a Muslim, tension begins to build. Unable to continue ignoring the prejudices around him, Edmond is finally forced to make a choice, one that will haunt him for years to come. For fans of Anne Tyler, The Space Between Us is a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and the pressures and family expectations that inform our decisions.

(Love stories at the moment of love)

Author: ubaidakhan
Publisher: Pencil
ISBN: 935883112X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 21

Book Description
In the enchanting novel "Whispers of the Heart," author Ubaida Khan weaves a tapestry of love stories, each capturing the magical moment when hearts intertwine and destinies collide. Set against the picturesque backdrop of Islamabad's G-8 sector in Pakistan, this book is a symphony of emotions that will leave readers mesmerized. Within these pages, readers will find a collection of diverse and captivating tales, each delving into the depths of human connection. From chance encounters that spark instant attraction to the blossoming of love between long-time friends, "Whispers of the Heart" explores the different facets of romance, reminding us of the ever-present allure of love. Meet Aisha, a spirited artist who finds inspiration in the most unexpected encounter with a reclusive writer, A