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Recommendations based on نقطة النورby بهاء طاهر
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The Forty Rules of Love
by Elif Shafak
A story of romance and spiritual enlightenment, exploring the teachings of a Sufi master.
Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy , a novel written by a ... (Goodreads)
The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran
Collection of poetic musings about life, spirituality, and love.
Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone ... (Goodreads)
Monsieur Ibrahim and The Flowers of the Qur'an
by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
A young Jewish boy befriends a Muslim shopkeeper and embarks on a journey of self-realization.
The book begins with a young Moïse, commonly referred to as Momo, preparing to search for a prostitute . It is written as a reflection of his childhood, and he notes that he was only eleven years old ... (Wikipedia)
Eleven Minutes
by Paulo Coelho
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and sexual liberation.
Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never ... (Goodreads)
Blindness
by José Saramago
A society is plunged into chaos when everyone suddenly loses their sight.
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a ... (Wikipedia)
The Pigeon
by Patrick Süskind
A young man's quest to find true love in a world of prejudice, hypocrisy and injustice.
Set in Paris and attracting comparisons with Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe, The Pigeon is Patrick Süskind's tense, disturbing follow-up to the bestselling Perfume. The novella tells the story of a ... (Goodreads)
Leo Africanus
by Amin Maalouf
An epic historical novel, tracing the journey of a North African explorer and diplomat in the 16th century.
"I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, ... (Goodreads)
The Broken Wings
by Kahlil Gibran
A philosophical tale of love and loss, exploring the journey of life and death.
This is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the ... (Goodreads)
Palace Walk
by Naguib Mahfouz
An exploration of family life in Cairo during the 1920s, uncovering secrets and tensions in the everyday.
al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad is the tyrannical head of his household, demanding total, unquestioning obedience from his wife, Amina, his sons, Yasin, Fahmy and Kamal, and his daughters, Khadija and ... (Wikipedia)
Season of Migration to the North
by Tayeb Salih
A stranger arrives in a small Sudanese village, stirring up dark secrets from the past.
After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to ... (Goodreads)
Veronika Decides to Die
by Paulo Coelho
A young woman's journey of self-discovery, learning to confront mortality and the power of love.
Veronika is a young woman from Ljubljana , Slovenia, who appears to have a perfect life, but nevertheless decides to commit suicide by overdosing with sleeping pills. While she waits to die, she ... (Wikipedia)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
by Patrick Süskind
A murder mystery set in 18th century France, exploring the depths of human obsession.
An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of ... (Goodreads)
The Devil and Miss Prym
by Paulo Coelho
A small town is given a proposition by a stranger, to kill someone in exchange for gold. The moral dilemma tests the town's values.
A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are ... (Goodreads)
The Insulted and Humiliated
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A story of revenge, focusing on morality and redemption.
Natasha leaves her parents' home and runs away with Alyosha (prince Alexey) – the son of Prince Valkovsky. As a result of his pain, her father, Nikolai, curses her. The only friend that remains by ... (Wikipedia)
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A man's quest for happiness and meaning, resulting in a journey of self-realization.
The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg . He is contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realization that nothing matters to him any more. It ... (Wikipedia)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
Zorba the Greek
by Nikos Kazantzakis
A man embarks on a journey of self-discovery, learning to embrace life with gusto and joy.
The book opens in a café in Piraeus , just before dawn on a gusty autumn morning. The year is most likely 1916. The narrator, a young Greek intellectual, resolves to set aside his books for a few ... (Wikipedia)
Redeeming Love
by Francine Rivers
A woman's journey of transformation and redemption through the power of love.
The story starts off in New England, 1835. Sarah, a beautiful young girl, meets her father, Alex Stafford, for the first time. Six-year-old Sarah learns that she is the product of Stafford's ... (Wikipedia)
Frenchman's Creek
by Daphne du Maurier
Lady Dona St. Columb escapes her unhappy marriage to Cornwall, where she falls in love with a French pirate.
Bored and restless in London's Restoration Court, Lady Dona escapes into the British countryside with her restlessness and thirst for adventure as her only guides. Eventually Dona lands in remote ... (Goodreads)
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
An aging king's descent into madness reveals the consequences of pride and vanity.
Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the ... (Goodreads)
Like Water for Chocolate
by Laura Esquivel
Magical tale of forbidden love, crossed by cultural and family traditions.
The book is divided into 12 sections named after the months of the year, starting in January and ending in December. Each section begins with a Mexican recipe . The chapters connect each dish to an ... (Wikipedia)
The Black Book
by James Patterson
A gripping murder mystery, exploring justice and the power of secrets.
This novel goes back and forth between present events involving Chicago detective Billy Harney and past events involving him. The novel starts with three people being found dead in an apartment ... (Wikipedia)
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A portrait of the struggles of a troubled man, exploring his inner turmoil.
The novel is divided into two parts. Serving as an introduction into the mind of the narrator, the first part of Notes from Underground is split into nine chapters: The narrator observes that utopian ... (Wikipedia)
Voices
by Arnaldur Indriðason
A detective investigates the murder of a hotel Santa Claus, uncovering dark secrets and personal demons.
Mancano pochi giorni a Natale e nello squallido seminterrato di un grande albergo di Reykjavik viene ritrovato il cadavere di un uomo vestito da Babbo Natale e con i pantaloni abbassati. Si tratta ... (Goodreads)
Life on the Refrigerator Door
by Alice Kuipers
A mother and daughter communicate through notes on the refrigerator door as their lives take unexpected turns.
Claire and her mother are running out of time, but they don't know it. Not yet. Claire is wrapped up with the difficulties of her bourgeoning adulthood—boys, school, friends, identity; Claire's ... (Goodreads)
Swimming Home
by Deborah Levy
A haunting tale of a poet's family vacation in the French Riviera, disrupted by the arrival of a disturbed young woman.
In the summer of 1994 the poet Joe Jacobs (Polish émigré Jozef Nowogrodzki) is on vacation in a summer home in the south of France with his wife Isabel, his daughter Nina, and their friends, the ... (Wikipedia)
Delicacy
by David Foenkinos
A young widow navigates the complexities of love and loss, finding solace in unexpected places.
Nathalie, a young attractive woman is in love with a young attractive man, François. He proposes and they marry (portrayed in something resembling a ‘dream’ sequence), honeymoon, and are immediately ... (Wikipedia)
The Assistant
by Bernard Malamud
A Jewish grocer's assistant struggles with his conscience after discovering his boss's corrupt practices.
Morris Bober, the 60-year-old proprietor of an old-fashioned grocery store, faces destitution as his customers abandon him in favor of more modernized shops. The situation is aggravated late one ... (Wikipedia)
Moon Tiger
by Penelope Lively
A woman's life story unravels as she reflects on her past while coping with a terminal illness.
Claudia Hampton, a 76-year-old English woman and a professional historian, is terminally ill and is spending her last remaining moments in and out of consciousness thinking of writing a history of ... (Wikipedia)
Innocent Erendira and Other Stories
by Gabriel García Márquez
Short stories exploring the depths of human emotion and the power of love.
This is the story of a twelve year old who accidentally sets fire to the house where she lives with her grandmother. The grandmother decides that Erendira must pay her back for the loss, and sells ... (Wikipedia)
