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Beauty (Selbourne Novel)
''Beauty'' is a 2009 novel by Raphael Selbourne about a young Muslim woman – the eponymous heroine – in search of personal freedom. ''Beauty'' was awarded the 2009 Costa First Novel Award. Plot summary Set in Wolverhampton, England, ''Beauty'' relays the tribulations of ten days in the life of Beauty Begum, a nineteen-year-old Muslim Bengali woman who has survived a substantial degree of physical and emotional harm from her family. As a consequence of the fact that the novel is told using an oscillating narrator, the reader has the benefit of 'hearing' the thoughts of the main characters. At the beginning of the novel, Beauty is again living with her family after having returned from Bangladesh, where she was supposed to be the wife of a mullah more than twice her age, an arranged marriage that has not worked out due to Beauty's opposition. Having preserved her virginity, and having been pronounced dumb and insane by her family, she now realizes that she is again being sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which is the belief that at least one deity exists. Historically, evidence of atheistic viewpoints can be traced back to classical antiquity and Nāstika, early Indian philosophy. In the Western world, atheism declined after Christianity gained prominence. The 16th century and the Age of Enlightenment marked the resurgence of atheistic thought in Europe. Atheism achieved a significant position worldwide in the 20th century. Estimates of those who have an absence of belief in a god range from 500 million to 1.1 billion people. Atheist organizations have defended the autonomy of science, freedom of thought, secularism, and secular ethics. Arguments for atheism range from p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Novels
English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish term for non-Amish, regardless of ethnicity * English studies, the study of English language and literature Media * ''English'' (2013 film), a Malayalam-language film * ''English'' (novel), a Chinese book by Wang Gang ** ''English'' (2018 film), a Chinese adaptation * ''The English'' (TV series), a 2022 Western-genre miniseries * ''English'' (play), a 2022 play by Sanaz Toossi People and fictional characters * English (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * English Fisher (1928–2011), American boxing coach * English Gardner (born 1992), American track and field sprinter * English McConnell (1882–1928), Irish footballer * Aiden English, a ring name of Matthew Rehwoldt (born 1987), American former professional wrestle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2009 British Novels
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Hindu–Arabic digit Circa 300 BC, as part of the Brahmi numerals, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a -look-alike. How the numbers got to their Gupta form is open to considerable debate. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the sign @ encircles a lowercase ''a''. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic. While the shape of the glyph for the digit 9 has an ascender in most modern typefa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tindal Street Press
Tindal Street Press was a Birmingham-based independent publisher of contemporary literary fiction, with a particular focus on writers born, or living, in Birmingham and the West Midlands. According to its website, it was "a publicly funded organisation committed to providing a national and international platform for talented new writers from the English regions". It emerged in 1998 from the Tindal Street Fiction Group, a Birmingham writers' group whose members have included Alan Mahar (its founder), Alan Beard, Jackie Gay, Joel Lane, Gul Davis, Mick Scully, Annie Murray, that was set up in 1983. Tindal Street is a no-through-street in Balsall Heath, where the group had met in the Old Moseley Arms pub. Tindal Street Press titles have been recognised by many prizes and listings, including three Booker Prize nominations ( Clare Morrall, Gaynor Arnold, Catherine O'Flynn) and two Costa First Novel of the Year awards. They have published first novels by several Midlands-based wri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. ''The Times'' was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as or , although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. ''The Times'' had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, ''The Sunday Times'' had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birmingham Post
The ''Birmingham Post'' is a weekly printed newspaper based in Birmingham, England, with distribution throughout the West Midlands. First published under the name the ''Birmingham Daily Post'' in 1857, it has had a succession of distinguished editors and has played an influential role in the life and politics of the city. It is currently owned by Reach plc. In June 2013, it launched a daily tablet edition called ''Birmingham Post Business Daily.'' In 2019, the website was scrapped to instead host the nation-wide business news brand ''Business Live''. History The '' Birmingham Journal'' was a weekly newspaper published between 1825 and 1869. A nationally influential voice in the Chartist movement in the 1830s, it was sold to John Frederick Feeney in 1844 and was a direct ancestor of today's ''Birmingham Post''. The 1855 Stamp Act removed the tax on newspapers and transformed the news trade. The price of the ''Journal'' was reduced from seven pence to four pence and circulatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. ''The Independent'' won the Brand of the Year Award in The Drum Awards for Online Media 2023. History 1980s Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at ''The Daily Telegraph'' who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empowerment
Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources. As a term, empowerment originates from American community psychology and is associated with the social scientist Julian Rappaport (1981). In social work, empowerment forms a practical approach of resource-oriented intervention. In the field of citizenship education and democratic education, empowerment is seen as a tool to increase the responsibility of the citizen. Empowerment is a key concept in the discourse on promot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welfare State
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for citizens unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. There is substantial variability in the form and trajectory of the welfare state across countries and regions. All welfare states entail some degree of Public–private partnership, private–public partnerships wherein the administration and delivery of at least some welfare programs occur through private entities. Welfare state services are also provided at varying territorial levels of government. The contemporary capitalist welfare state has been described as a type of mixed economy in the sense of state interventionism, as opposed to a mixture of planning and markets, since economic p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darwinism
''Darwinism'' is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Also called ''Darwinian theory'', it originally included the broad concepts of transmutation of species or of evolution which gained general scientific acceptance after Darwin published ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859, including concepts which predated Darwin's theories. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term ''Darwinism'' in April 1860. Terminology ''Darwinism'' subsequently referred to the specific concepts of natural selection, the Weismann barrier, or the central dogma of molecular biology. Though the term usually refers strictly to biological evolution, creationists have appropriated it to refer to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illiteracy
Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition); and the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, including the social and cultural aspects of reading, writing, and functional literacy. Definition The range of definitions of literacy used by NGOs, think tanks, and advocacy groups since the 1990s suggests that this shift in understanding from "discrete skill" to "social practice" is both ongoing and uneven. Some definitions remain fairly closely aligned with the traditional "ability to read and write" connotation, whereas others take a broader view: * The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (USA) included "quantitative literacy" ( numeracy) in its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
