Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Brought to you by Penguin. A stunning memoir that transforms our understanding of a generation born at a key turning point in world history In my home country, they call me a ‘bornfree’. Simukai Chigudu was one of the first generation to be born after the end of colonial rule in Zimbabwe...

Born in West Africa in the early 1950s, Somé was kidnapped at age four by a French Jesuit missionary to be trained as a priest, for the next 15 years enduring the harsh regimen of a seminary where his native language and tribal traditions were systematically suppressed. At age 20 he escaped, but when he returned to his Dugara people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) they rejected him as an outsider. To reconnect with his native culture, Somé underwent a month-long initiation into shamanism.

Once again, the poet casts her spell as she resumes one of the greatest personal narratives of our time. In this continuation, Angelou relates how she joins a "colony" of Black American expatriates in Ghana--only to discover no one ever goes home again...

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. Age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened. Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate-change activism.

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days’ shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. The three men's lives play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.

After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.  

In 1978, the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, had reached a boiling point. Hundreds of members of the Irish Republican Army, determined to drive the hated British out of the province—killing soldiers and police, detonating bombs, while arming themselves with firearms and explosives—had been arrested and incarcerated in the notorious British prison known as the Maze.

Sarfraz Manzoor was two years old when his family emigrated from Pakistan to join his father in Bury Park, Luton. His teenage years were a constant battle to reconcile being both British and Muslim. But when his best friend introduced him to Bruce Springsteen, his life changed for ever. In this affectionate and timely memoir, Manzoor retraces his journey from the frustrations of his childhood to his reaction to the tragedies of 9/11 and 7/7. 

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

Andrei Tarkovsky: A Life on the Cross by Lyudmila Boyadzhieva is an intimate portrayal of the renowned Soviet filmmaker’s life, struggles, and artistic legacy.

As an infant, Julian Brave NoiseCat's father was found abandoned in a dumpster. Against all odds, he survived and made it out of his impoverished reservation only to abandon his own son. As a young man, NoiseCat embarks on an unforgettable journey into his family's past and his people's present. NoiseCat grapples with the erasure of North America's First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations, and illuminates the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental and political movements that are reshaping the future.

'Bright, breezy and unpretentious' Guardian 'A loving and faithful portrait of Almina and her world' Countryfile magazine * * * * * * The story of the real Downton Abbey, told by Lady Fiona Carnarvon, chatelaine of Highclere Castle where the phenomentally successful TV series was filmed. Lady...

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

In this intimate biography of the Prince of Soul, David Ritz provides a candid look at a star and a friend. Ritz had been collaborating with Marvin Gaye on his story for several years before the singer's tragic death and had conducted a series of extraordinary interviews in which Gaye discussed his deepest secrets. What emerges is a full-scale portrait of a charming but tortured artist, a brilliant singer with a divided soul.

Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared.

The complete autobiography of legendary basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, covering both his storied career and his colorful life off the court. Superman. Diesel. The Big Aristotle. Shaq Fu. The Big Daddy. The Big Shaqtus. Wilt Chamberneezy. The Real Deal. The Big Shamrock. Shaq. You know him by...

In 2021, the world of cooking lost a legendary figure. Albert Roux, together with his brother Michel, transformed the way we eat, cook and appreciate food in this country. It is no exaggeration to say that most of what makes our current culinary landscape so vibrant began with these two brothers and their groundbreaking restaurant, Le Gavroche. Albert's memoir takes us from his childhood in wartime France, where the ever-looming presence of the German troops made it a challenge for his mother to keep the family fed, right up to the almost instant success of Le Gavroche

Considered by many to be a founder of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra - a.k.a. Herman Blount - was a composer, keyboardist, bandleader, philosopher, entrepreneur, poet, and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial from Saturn. He recorded over 200 albums with his Arkestra, which, dressed in Egypto-space costumes, played everything from boogie-woogie and swing to fusion and free jazz. 

The renowned political speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of As a Jew rediscovers Judaism, finding timeless wisdom and spiritual connection in its age-old practices and traditions. “Sarah Hurwitz was Michelle Obama’s head speechwriter, and with this book she becomes...

The New York Times bestselling story from the author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride...