Nelofer Pazira0.0 As a young girl growing up in 1970s Afghanistan, Nelofer Pazira seems destined for a bright future. The daughter of liberal-minded professionals, she enjoys a safe, loving and privileged life. Some of her early memories include convivial family picnics and New Years’ celebrations overlooking the thousands of red flowers that carpet the hills of Mazar. But Nelofer’s world is shattered when she is just five and her father is imprisoned for refusing to support the communist party. This episode plants a “seed of anger” in her, which is given plenty of opportunity to grow as the years unfold.
In 1979, the Soviets invade Afghanistan beginning a ten-year occupation. The country becomes an armed camp with Russians fighting U.S.-backed mujahidin fighters while trying to impose military rule. For Nelofer, daily life includes an endless succession of tanks, rockets screaming overhead and explosions in the street. During this time, she and her best friend, Dyana, seek refuge in their love of poetry. At eleven, the two girls throw stones at Soviet tanks and plot other acts of rebellion at the local school. As Nelofer gets older, she joins the resistance movement, distributes contraband books, studies guerilla warfare and hides a gun in her parent’s mint garden.
When Nelofer’s younger brother comes home from school in military garb, the family finally decides to flee Afghanistan. What follows is a perilous, clandestine journey across rugged mountains into Pakistan. But the life of a refugee is not what Nelofer expects. Though she once idealized the mujahidin as freedom fighters, she is shocked, as a woman, to find herself stripped of her personal freedom in their midst.
In 1990, Nelofer and her family are offered refugee status in Canada. Here she corresponds with her friend Dyana, whose letters reveal the increasing oppression of life under the Taliban. Fearing that her friend will kill herself, Pazira returns to Afghanistan to rescue her. This search becomes the basis for the acclaimed film Kandahar. Her journey to discover Dyana’s tragedy leads her finally to Russia, the land of her enemy, where she confronts the legacy of the Soviet invasion of her homeland first-hand.
A Bed of Red Flowers is a gripping, heart-rending story about a country caught in a struggle of the superpowers – and of the real people behind the politics. Universally acclaimed for its astute insights and extraordinary humanity, Pazira’s memoir won the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize for 2005.The Winnipeg Free Press writes: “Powerfully written, A Bed of Red Flowers is a rare account of a misunderstood country and its intrepid people, trying to live ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances.” The Gazette (Montreal) describes the book as “an outpouring of passionate non-fiction that captivates like the tales of Sheherazade.… It’s a remarkable journey. An inspiring read.”
Peter C. Newman0.0 Now aged 75, Peter C. Newman at last tells the story of his stranger-than-fiction life. Try to keep up as we follow his many lives: as a pampered child in a Czech chateau; a Jewish kid in short pants being machine-gunned by Nazi fighter planes on the beach at Biarritz, en route to the last ship to escape from France in 1940; as a refugee on an Ontario farm; as an outsider on a scholarship at Upper Canada College; as a" Financial Post" journalist, then an author whose "Renegade in Power" made Canadian politics dramatic and disrespectfully exciting for the first time; as the man who revealed the secrets of the rulers of the Canadian business world in "The Canadian Establishment," and other huge business success stories, including "The Establishment Man," on Conrad Black; or the millionaire who turned his back on business books and tackled Canadian history ("Company of Adventurers" and other triumphs), in a career where his work has dominated the bestseller lists in politics, business, history, and current affairs.
In the midst of all this were his years at the "Toronto Star" and "Maclean's" where, as editor, he took the magazine weekly - a huge accomplishment. He is still a legend there, where his columns continue to run.
He knew and wrote about every prime minister from Louis St. Laurent to Paul Martin and every prominent Canadian - hero or villain - in between. Yet his most interesting character is - Peter C. Newman. Incredibly, this central figure known to millions of Canadians sees himself as a perennial outsider. In personal terms, the rich little Czech boy whose nannies never stayed talks frankly about his marriages and the women he has known before his ultimate marriage to his beloved Alvy. His enthusiasms - from jazz to the Canadian Navy, not to mention his adventures on his beloved sailboat - make for a rich portrait of an astonishingcharacter, one who never stops being controversial.
Geoffrey Stevens0.0 In his final years, Dalton Camp was working on a memoir of the latter half of his life. The Player draws on the manuscript of that memoir, and so, once again, Canadians can take pleasure in the voice and the wisdom of Dalton Camp. Dalton Camp left deep impressions on the Canadian political landscape. His skill as a political strategist and advertising genius revived the fortunes of the Conservatives in the Maritime provinces. His hard-won reforms in the federal Tory party democratized the practices of both major parties. Following his second unsuccessful attempt to win a seat in Parliament in 1968, Camp moved seamlessly from the role of political insider to that of political pundit. His gracefully crafted newspaper columns, written twice weekly and syndicated nationally, set the standard for political analysis in Canada. In 1986, Camp accepted Brian Mulroney's invitation to join the Prime Minister's Office as a senior policy advisor. Camp later called this the worst mistake he ever made. He left Ottawa two-and-a-half years later, his health ravaged, his marriage in ruins and his disenchantment with Mulroney deep and abiding. A heart transplant in 1993 gave him a new lease on life, extending it by more than eight productive years. To the very end of his life, Dalton Camp found fulfillment in his role as Canada's most respected political columnist. He took great delight in his weekly radio debates on CBC's Morningside, with Eric Kierans and Stephen Lewis. He died on March 18, 2002.
Уоррен Кариу0.0 Powerful, funny, moving and personal, Lake of the Prairies is a richly layered exploration of the ubiquitous childhood question: where do I come from?
Warren Cariou’s story of origin begins in the boreal Saskatchewan landscape of rock, water and muskeg that is Meadow Lake -- ensconced in the ethos of the north, where there is magic in a story and fiction is worth much more than fact.
Grounded in the fertile soil of Meadow Lake are two historical traditions -- Native and settler. Warren Cariou’s maternal grandparents were European immigrants who cleared acres of dense forest and turned it into pasture. This land also held traces of centuries of Cree settlement -- arrowheads, spear points and stone hammers, which Cariou stumbled upon as a boy. Though the tragic story of how these traditions came to share the same home would remain buried from Warren until much later, history’s painful legacy was much in view. In the schoolyard and on the street corners Warren witnessed the discrimination, anger and fear directed at the town’s Cree and Metis populations -- prejudices he absorbed as his own.
As an adult, Warren Cariou has been forced to confront the politics of race in Meadow Lake. He learned that a rambunctious Native schoolmate could be involved in a torture and murder that would shock the world. And then Warren discovered family secrets kept hidden for generations, secrets that would alter forever Warren’s sense of identity and belonging in Meadow Lake. In the tradition of Wallace Stegner’s classic Wolf Willow, Lake of the Prairies is an intimate and provocative memoir.
Ken McGoogan0.0 John Rae's accomplishments, surpassing all nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, were worthy of honors and international fame. No explorer even approached Rae's prolific record: 1,776 miles surveyed of uncharted territory; 6,555 miles hiked on snowshoes; and 6,700 miles navigated in small boats. Yet, he was denied fair recognition of his discoveries because he dared to utter the truth about the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew, Rae's predecessors in the far north. Author Ken McGoogan vividly narrates the astonishing adventures of Rae, who found the last link to the Northwest Passage and uncovered the grisly truth about the cannibalism of Franklin and his crew. A bitter smear campaign by Franklin's supporters would deny Rae his knighthood and bury him in ignominy for over one hundred and fifty years. Ken McGoogan's passion to secure justice for a true North American hero in this revelatory book produces a completely original and compelling portrait that elevates Rae to his rightful place as one of history's greatest explorers.
Trevor Herriot0.0 Trevor Herriot’s memoir and history of the Qu’Appelle River Valley has won the CBA Libris Award for First-Time Author, the Writers’ Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award, and the Regina Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction.
Франсуа Рикар0.0 Cette biographie de Gabrielle Roy signée par un intellectuel de renom éclaire de façon nouvelle la vie et l'œuvre de l'auteure de Bonheur d'occasion. Fruit d'un travail minutieux et de plusieurs années de recherche, l'ouvrage brosse le portrait d'une femme totalement dévouée à la littérature.
