Showing results by narrator "Mozhan Marno" in All Categories

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.

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.

Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart. Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her.

The old painting was done on glass, and found beneath the ruins of the ancient, decaying French mansion that Emily Hastings' sister, Irene, had inherited from the estate of the Marquis de Garac. The cold and distant Monsieur Philippe Gastion informed them that the painting was a forgotten masterpiece and should be given a place of honor. Soon afterward, Irene became mysteriously ill, and other signs of imminent danger pointed directly toward Emily.