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A Thousand Splendid Suns
''A Thousand Splendid Suns'' is a 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, following the huge success of his bestselling 2003 debut ''The Kite Runner''. Mariam, an illegitimate teenager from Herat, is forced to marry a shoemaker from Kabul after a family tragedy. Laila, born a generation later, lives a relatively privileged life, but her life intersects with Mariam's when a similar tragedy forces her to accept a marriage proposal from Mariam's husband. Hosseini has remarked that he regards the novel as a "mother-daughter story" in contrast to ''The Kite Runner'', which he considers a "father-son story" and friendships between men. It continues some of the themes used in his previous work, such as familial dynamics, but instead focusing primarily on female characters and their roles in contemporary Afghan society. ''A Thousand Splendid Suns'' was released on May 22, 2007, and received favorable widespread critical acclaim from ''Kirkus Reviews'', ''Publishers Weekly' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini (;Pashto/Dari ; born March 4, 1965) is an Afghan Americans, Afghan-American novelist, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR goodwill ambassador, and former physician. His debut novel ''The Kite Runner'' (2003) was a critical and commercial success; the book and his subsequent novels have all been at least partially set in Afghanistan and have featured an Afghans, Afghan as the protagonist. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, to a diplomat father, Hosseini spent some time living in Iran and France. When Hosseini was 15, his family applied for asylum in the United States, where he later became a naturalized citizen. Hosseini did not return to Afghanistan until 2003 when he was 38, an experience similar to that of the protagonist in ''The Kite Runner''. In later interviews, Hosseini admitted to feeling Survivor guilt, survivor's guilt for having been able to leave the country prior to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, Soviet invasion and War in Afghanistan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saib Tabrizi
Saib Tabrizi ( fa, صائب تبریزی, ''Ṣāʾib Tabrīzī'', , ''Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿalī Ṣāʾib''), was a Persian poet and one of the greatest masters of a form of classical Arabic and Persian lyric poetry characterized by rhymed couplets, known as the ghazal. Besides writing in Persian, Saib was known to have written 17 ''ghazals'' and ''molammaʿs'' in his native Azerbaijani Turkic. Saib was born in Tabriz, and educated in Isfahan and at some time around 1626, he traveled to India, where he was received into the court of Shah Jahan. He stayed for a time in Kabul and in Kashmir, returning home after several years abroad. After his return, the emperor of Persia, Shah Abbas II, bestowed upon him the title ''King of Poets''. Saib's reputation is based primarily on some 300,000 couplets, including his epic poem ''Qandahār-nāma'' (“The Campaign Against Qandahār”). (The city of Qandahār or Kandahar in today's Afghanistan was in Saib Tabrizi's lifetime a long-standi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sufism
Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, ritualism, asceticism and esotericism. It has been variously defined as "Islamic mysticism",Martin Lings, ''What is Sufism?'' (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 2005; first imp. 1983, second imp. 1999), p.15 "the mystical expression of Islamic faith", "the inward dimension of Islam", "the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam", the "main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization" of mystical practice in Islam, and "the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice". Practitioners of Sufism are referred to as "Sufis" (from , ), and historically typically belonged to "orders" known as (pl. ) – congregations formed around a grand who would be the last in a chain of successive teachers linking back to Muham ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxonian Review
''The Oxonian Review'' is a literary magazine produced by postgraduate students at the University of Oxford. Every fortnight during term time, an online edition is published featuring reviews and essays on current affairs and literature. It is the largest university-wide postgraduate-student publication at the University of Oxford. History ''The Oxonian Review'' was established in 2001 at Balliol College, Oxford, as the ''Oxonian Review of Books'', as a termly print magazine featuring essays and reviews of recently published work in , , |
The Denver Post
''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in Denver, Colorado. As of June 2022, it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 million page views, according to comScore. Ownership The ''Post'' was the flagship newspaper of MediaNews Group Inc., founded in 1983 by William Dean "Dinky" Singleton and Richard Scudder. MediaNews is today one of the nation's largest newspaper chains, publisher of 61 daily newspapers and more than 120 non-daily publications in 13 states. MediaNews bought ''The Denver Post'' from the Times Mirror Co. on December 1, 1987. Times Mirror had bought the paper from the heirs of founder Frederick Gilmer Bonfils in 1980. Since 2010, The Denver Post has been owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which acquired its bankrupt parent company, MediaNews Group. In April 2018, a group called "Together for Colorado Springs" said that it was rais ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tajiks
Tajiks ( fa, تاجيک، تاجک, ''Tājīk, Tājek''; tg, Тоҷик) are a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group native to Central Asia, living primarily in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Tajiks are the largest ethnicity in Tajikistan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. They speak varieties of Persian, a Western Iranian language. In Tajikistan, since the 1939 Soviet census, its small Pamiri and Yaghnobi ethnic groups are included as Tajiks. In China, the term is used to refer to its Pamiri ethnic groups, the Tajiks of Xinjiang, who speak the Eastern Iranian Pamiri languages. In Afghanistan, the Pamiris are counted as a separate ethnic group. As a self-designation, the literary New Persian term ''Tajik'', which originally had some previous pejorative usage as a label for eastern Persians or Iranians, has become acceptable during the last several decades, particularly as a result of Soviet administration in Central Asia. Alternative names for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caesarean Section
Caesarean section, also known as C-section or caesarean delivery, is the surgical procedure by which one or more babies are delivered through an incision in the mother's abdomen, often performed because vaginal delivery would put the baby or mother at risk. Reasons for the operation include obstructed labor, twin pregnancy, high blood pressure in the mother, breech birth, and problems with the placenta or umbilical cord. A caesarean delivery may be performed based upon the shape of the mother's pelvis or history of a previous C-section. A trial of vaginal birth after C-section may be possible. The World Health Organization recommends that caesarean section be performed only when medically necessary. Most C-sections are performed without a medical reason, upon request by someone, usually the mother. A C-section typically takes 45 minutes to an hour. It may be done with a spinal block, where the woman is awake, or under general anesthesia. A urinary catheter is used to drain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taliban
The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamism, Islamist, Jihadism, jihadist, and Pashtun nationalism, Pashtun nationalist political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001), from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the United States invasion of Afghanistan, United States invasion. It Fall of Kabul (2021), recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 after nearly 20 years of Taliban insurgency, insurgency, and currently controls all of the country, although its government has Recognition of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, not yet been recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women in Afgh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's Islam by country#Countries, second-largest Muslim population just behind Indonesia. Pakistan is the List of countries and dependencies by area, 33rd-largest country in the world by area and 2nd largest in South Asia, spanning . It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by India to India–Pakistan border, the east, Afghanistan to Durand Line, the west, Iran to Iran–Pakistan border, the southwest, and China to China–Pakistan border, the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north, and also shares a maritime border with Oman. Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and fina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pashtuns
Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically referred to as Afghans () or xbc, αβγανο () until the 1970s, when the term's meaning officially evolved into that of a demonym for all residents of Afghanistan, including those outside of the Pashtun ethnicity. The group's native language is Pashto, an Iranian language in the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Additionally, Dari Persian serves as the second language of Pashtuns in Afghanistan while those in the Indian subcontinent speak Urdu and Hindi (see Hindustani language) as their second language. Pashtuns are the 26th-largest ethnic group in the world, and the largest segmentary lineage society; there are an estimated 350–400 Pashtun tribes and clans with a variety of origin theories. The total popul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
