Allah is Not Obliged

Allah is Not Obliged
Author: Ahmadou Kourouma
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307793842

ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED TO BE FAIR ABOUT ALL THE THINGS HE DOES HERE ON EARTH.These are the words of the boy soldier Birahima in the final masterpiece by one of Africa’s most celebrated writers, Ahmadou Kourouma. When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Raw and unforgettable, despairing yet filled with laughter, Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.

Allah Is Not Obliged

Allah Is Not Obliged
Author: Ahmadou Kourouma
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2007
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 0099433923

A powerful and affecting novel of Africa’s child-soldiers, by French Africa’s pre-eminent novelist. Birahima is ten years old. He lives in the Ivory Coast. He is a soldier. In Ahmadou Kourouma’s extraordinary novel, Birahima tells his story. At the age of ten his mother dies and Birahima leaves his native village, accompanied by the sorcerer/crook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by a rebel force and press-ganged into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a totally chaotic civil war, and alongside many other boys, some no older than himself, Birahima sees death, torture, amputation and madness, but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Ahmadou Kourouma’s masterpiece is powerful, terrible and frequently bitterly funny. From the Hardcover edition.

Allah is Not Obliged

Allah is Not Obliged
Author: Ahmadou Kourouma
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007-05-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 030727957X

ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED TO BE FAIR ABOUT ALL THE THINGS HE DOES HERE ON EARTH.These are the words of the boy soldier Birahima in the final masterpiece by one of Africa’s most celebrated writers, Ahmadou Kourouma. When ten-year-old Birahima's mother dies, he leaves his native village in the Ivory Coast, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity. Raw and unforgettable, despairing yet filled with laughter, Allah Is Not Obliged reveals the ways in which children's innocence and youth are compromised by war.

Muhammad's Allah

Muhammad's Allah
Author: Ahmed Hulusi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2012-05-02
Genre: God (Islam)
ISBN: 9780615634883

Why not just Allah? Why Muhammad's Allah? This unique book explains that Allah is not a god (deity) and that this god-concept we have all come to embrace, as a result of misleading information and conditioning, is not the Allah expounded by Muhammad (saw). Everyone, from the most learned to the most ignorant, has a concept of God. A God that we love, get angry with, judge and even accuse, at times, for doing wrong by us! We imagine this God, who sits on a star in the heavens or dwells somewhere in space, to be like a benevolent paternal figure or a majestic sultan! Those with broader views (!) are well aware, of course, that such a God cannot exist and claim they do not believe in a God, proudly declaring themselves as atheists. Whereas, neither the aforementioned believers who postulate a God with their hearsay knowledge and conditionings, nor the atheists who deny and reject the idea of a God, have any awareness of Allah as explained by Muhammad (saw)! So what is the reality of Allah revealed by Muhammad (saw)? Muhammad (saw), who articulated the Quran to us, taught us there is no God, that there is only Allah; that there is a System present within life, by which those who fail to comply, are led to suffer the consequences of their own actions. If we live with the awareness of the existence of an afterlife, our primary concern should be to know Allah and the life awaiting us after death, so that we may prepare accordingly. Taking this into consideration, let us now try to understand the One denoted by the name Allah disclosed by Muhammad (saw).

Little Boys Come from the Stars

Little Boys Come from the Stars
Author: Emmanuel Dongala
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2007-05-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374708053

The peculiar and moving story of a Congolese boy's coming-of-age amid the political strife of postcolonial Congo His nickname is Matapari, which means "trouble." He is an African child of the '90s--brilliant, mischievous, postcolonial, postmodern-caught in the crossfire of a chaotically liberated African country. Matapari grows up in a world of talking drums, the Internet, and satellite TV, a world of dictators who remake themselves as democrats overnight. His uncle is a stooge for the dictator; his father is a scholarly recluse obsessed with proving that blacks played key roles in Western history. Matapari is a young man in the middle--but the shrewdness and wit with which he tells his often riotously funny story set him apart from his relatives and countrymen. Emmanuel Dongala uses the ingenious viewpoint of a child to show up the telltale world of adults--and to show how one preserves one's independence in a corrupt and violent society.

Monnew

Monnew
Author: Ahmadou Kourouma
Publisher:
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1993
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The tragic story of Djigui Keita, a fictional king of Soba, who is overwhelmed by the French colonial forces.

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD

ZALMEN OR THE MADNESS OF GOD
Author: Elie Wiesel
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013-04-10
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0307833038

On Yom Kippur eve in 1965, Elie Wiesel found himself in Russia, “in a synagogue crowded with people. The air was stifling. The cantor was chanting . . . Suddenly a mad thought crossed my mind: Something is about to happen; any moment now the Rabbi will wake up, shake himself, pound the pulpit and cry out, shout his pain, his rage, his truth. I felt the tension building up inside me; the wait became unbearable. But nothing happened . . . It was too late. The Rabbi no longer had the strength to imagine himself free.” In Zalmen, or The Madness of God, Wiesel gives his Rabbi that strength, the courage to voice his oppression and isolation, and the result is a passionate cry. This play illuminates not only the plight of the Soviet Jew, but the anguish of individuals everywhere who must survive—and yet long for something more than mere survival. (Adapted for the stage by Marion Wiesel.)

Language in Ahmadou Kourouma ́s "Allah n’est pas obligé"

Language in Ahmadou Kourouma ́s
Author: Ikechukwu Aloysius Orjinta
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2011-04-12
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 364089071X

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics for the subject French - Literature, Works, LMU Munich (Fakultaet fuer Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften), course: French - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, language: English, abstract: This approach may at first sight appear like a linguistic revolt or rebellion since it distorts and massacres the French vocabulary and grammar. The goal of Ahmadou Kourouma and his colleagues is to prove that the French language cannot open up the African Weltanschauung (World view). The truth is simply that the structure of the French language fails to describe and express the African thought. This is exactly what the Canadians, the Swiss and the Belgians observed that made them invent Canadian French, Swiss French, and Belgian French. Elsewhere in European Studies I have advocated this intercultural dialogue in German Studies (Germanistik and Interkulturelle Germanistik) as a way out in the poor performance of the dissemination of German language, literature and culture. Even in English, we have the Queens English, the American English and the African pidgin English. Africans can as well have African French. Each writer faced with the realities of myriads of African misery: Colonialism, slavery, neo – colonialism, civil and religious wars, cannot afford the luxury of l’Art pour l’Art. Ahmadou Kourouma has to use the French language to mobilize his people for a way forward. He needed to bear a genuine testimony to the situation of his people, but he could not achieve this mobilization of his uneducated people adequately faced with the dilemma of using a foreign language.

The Bedwetter

The Bedwetter
Author: Sarah Silverman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2010-04-02
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0061987077

From the outrageously filthy and oddly innocent comedienne and star of the powerful 2015 film I Smile Back Sarah Silverman comes a memoir—her first book—that is at once shockingly personal, surprisingly poignant, and still pee-in-your-pants funny. In this collection of humorous essays, Sarah Silverman tells tales of growing up Jewish in New Hampshire, losing her virginity, learning to curse at 3 years old, and being a bedwetter until she was old enough to drive, and in a surprisingly poignant piece, she recounts the accidental death of her infant brother. Of course, in her loopy, taboo-breaking way, she always manages somehow to leave you laughing. But then you’d expect nothing less from a woman who sang to her boyfriend on national television that she was “F***ing Matt Damon.” If you like Sarah’s television show The Sarah Silverman Program, or memoirs such as Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea and Artie Lange’s Too Fat to Fish, you’ll love The Bedwetter.