The Land of No Laughter PDF Download

Author: Susan F. J. Daniel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781552152430
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Author: Mwijarubi, Mkama
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
ISBN: 9987080545
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Treeland is an imaginary land in an imaginary era. It is populated by a jolly people that love two things above everything else: laughter and trees, hence, Treeland: The Land of Laughter. Between peals of laughter Treelanders tend their trees and forests with loving care. They never cut down trees, or act in any way that would destroy their natural environment. As Treeland’s warrior King Majabe nears 100 years and despite his smiling and laughing face, he is worried for not having a male heir. He has a willful, assertive, charming and very beautiful daughter, Princess Zuri, but in Treeland, daughters are not expected to reign. Zuri must marry so her husband could become the heir to her father’s throne. But she has no intention of marrying any suitor chosen for her. A struggle of wills and wits ensues between Zuri and her father and the age old patriarchal traditions that he represents. In the midst of this struggle, Treeland is attacked by a tree-cutting people with no veneration for either tree or human life. Will Old King Majabe manage to save his Kingdom? Will Zuri survive the coming ordeals imposed by war and an arcane tradition and ascend Treeland’s throne? This tale is at once traditional and current, conventional and unconventional, modern and post-modern, existential but optimistic. Treeland: The Land of Laughter is a novel intended for young people, but readers of all ages will also enjoy it.

Author: David Spero
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780970104106
Category : Meditation
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113906
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.

Author: Ahmad Kamal
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595010059
Category : Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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"In the veins of the men of Tataristan courses the blood of Mongol, Hun, Macedonian and Chinese…the fanaticism of Saladin’s and Tamerlane’s Islam, and a rich heritage of Chinese wile." This is the land and these are the countrymen of Ahmad Kamal’s ancestors. A Muslim of Tartar stock, Mr. Kamal was born in America. His great-grandfather fought against the Russians in Central Asia. More than a century later, his American descendant returned to renew the battle in the 1930s. Kamal entered Turkestan through India and Tibet, crossing in mid-winter the most formidable frontier in the world, the Himalayan passes. The account of this journey — under constant threat of extinction from falling avalanches of snow — begins a series of almost incredibly hazardous adventures, told with an authenticity that unrolls the whole richly colored tapestry of a strange, feudal, and barbaric land. AuthorBio: Ahmad Kamal was born on a Colorado Indian reservation in 1914 of Turco-Tatar parents who were forced into exile by the Tsar for participation in the 1905 Revolution. Kamal's genetic makeup imprinted all his endeavors be they as deep sea diver, combat pilot, horseman, warrior, and as exponent of national self-determination. He commanded the Basmachi Rebellion in Turkistan in the 1920's and 1930's, supported the independence of Indonesia and Algeria, and was commanding General of the Muslim liberation forces of the Union of Burma into the 1980's. Though he devoted his entire life to the independence of his fatherland from the Russian and Chinese yokes, he died a month short of the collapse of the USSR. Japan's press, Asahi Shimbun marked his exsistence stating: "Ahmad Kamal lived like a Samurai—and died like a Samurai."

Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374709238
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game. Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.

Author: Rita Williams-Garcia
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061975753
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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In this groundbreaking novel, Coretta Scott King Award winner Rita Williams-Garcia uses her vividly realistic voice to highlight an often taboo practice that affects millions of girls around the world every year, and to explore a perspective not often depicted in YA fiction. Even though they were born in different countries, Akilah and Victoria are true best friends. But Victoria has been acting strange ever since she returned from her summer in Nigeria, where she had a special coming-of-age ceremony. Why does proud Victoria, named for a queen, slouch at her desk and answer the teacher's questions in a whisper? And why won't she laugh with Akilah anymore? Akilah's name means "intelligent," and she is determined to find out what's wrong. But when she learns the terrible secret Victoria is hiding, she suddenly has even more questions. The only problem is, they might not be the kind that have answers.

Author: Ping Zhu
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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WINNER — 2020 Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title During the Mao years, laughter in China was serious business. Simultaneously an outlet for frustrations and grievances, a vehicle for socialist education, and an object of official study, laughter brought together the political, the personal, the aesthetic, the ethical, the affective, the physical, the aural, and the visual. The ten essays in Maoist Laughter convincingly demonstrate that the connection between laughter and political culture was far more complex than conventional conceptions of communist indoctrination can explain. Their sophisticated readings of a variety of genres—including dance, cartoon, children’s literature, comedy, regional oral performance, film, and fiction—uncover many nuanced innovations and experiments with laughter during what has been too often misinterpreted as an unrelentingly bleak period. In Mao’s China, laughter helped to regulate both political and popular culture and often served as an indicator of shifting values, alliances, and political campaigns. In exploring this phenomenon, Maoist Laughter is a significant correction to conventional depictions of socialist China. “Maoist Laughter brings together prominent scholars of contemporary China to make a timely and original contribution to the burgeoning field of Maoist literature and culture. One of its main strengths lies in the sheer number of genres covered, including dance, traditional Chinese performance, visual arts, film, and literature. The focus on humor in the Maoist period gives an exciting new perspective from which to understand cultural production in twentieth-century China.” —Krista Van Fleit, University of South Carolina “An illuminating study of the culture of laughter in the Maoist period. Focusing on much-neglected topics such as satire, jokes, and humor, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of how socialist culture actually ‘worked’ as a coherent, dynamic, and constructive life experience. The chapters show that traditional culture could almost blend perfectly with revolutionary mission.” —Xiaomei Chen, University of California, Davis

Author: Milan Kundera
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063290693
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.

Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher: Hayward Gallery Publishing
ISBN: 9781853322662
Category : Anecdotes
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Text by Mami Kataoka, Simon Critchley.