The 15-Minute Book Club

Omar El Akkad's book is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar believed his whole life that the West offered freedom and justice for all. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. 

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15minbookclub

Mohammed El-Kurd Addresses the UN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xuan2uAQg...

Margaret Atwood's iconic novel is set in a dystopian future where world-wide environmental collapse & disease have caused a widespread infertility crisis. This gives rise to a radical fundamentalist group called The Sons of Jacob who stage a coup against the United States government and replace it with the Republic of Gilead. The new regime forces the few fertile women into reproductive servitude as handmaids. The novel is narr...

Jeanette Winterson's classic coming of age story is a semi-autobiography. She is adopted by strict Pentecostal evangelists in the north of England, and from a young age she’s raised to be a missionary and is immersed in a rigid religious worldview. But as Jeanette gets older, she discovers that she’s a lesbian, which puts her in direct conflict with her church and her adoptive mother. 

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15minbookclub Mentioned book: Wh...

Ken Kesey's classic novel is set in a state mental institute in 1950s America. Nurse Ratchet runs the ward like a military operation, weaponising shame, fear, and manipulation to keep the patients compliant. She maintains this façade of politeness and professionalism while emotionally castrating the men in her care, who have internalised the notion that they are deeply broken and can’t survive freedom outside the hospital. All this...

Lois Lowry's modern classic in young adult literature is a dystopian novel that takes place in a seemingly utopian society that has eliminated pain, fear, war, and hatred by converting to "Sameness"— which is a plan that erases all emotional depth and memories of the past. It follows the main character, Jonas, he’s a 12-year-old boy who lives in this tightly controlled community. Everyone is assigned roles in the community when the...

Khaled Hosseini's critically acclaimed novel follows Amir, a young boy from a wealthy family in Kabul, and his close friendship with Hassan, the son of his father’s servant. Despite their bond, class differences and societal pressures strain their relationship, and a pivotal moment of betrayal by Amir changes both of their lives forever.

A Thousand Splendid Suns Review: https://salmaintb.podbean.com/e/week-33-a-thousand-splendid-...

Mark Haddon's novel was first published in 2003. It’s a unique story that’s told from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy Christopher Boone, who describes himself as “a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties." The novel begins with Christopher discovering that his neighbour's dog, Wellington, has been mysteriously killed with a garden fork. Christopher sets out to find the person who killed the dog, and what begins as a s...

Kathryn Stockett's novel is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, around the time of The Civil Rights Movement in America. It follows three characters, Skeeter Phelan; a young white aspiring writer who comes back home from college and starts to develop an awareness of racial inequality and the unfair treatment of Black domestic workers, specifically black women who work as maids in white homes. The second character is Ai...

Adania Shibli's groundbreaking novel is divided into two parts. The first half is narrated in the third person from the perspective of an Israeli soldier, and is set in the summer of 1949 in the Negev desert. The second half takes place in the present day, and is narrated in the first person from the perspective of a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah. The novel draws a chilling parallel between past and present, showing that the...

Michael J. Sandel examines our current political polarisation, which in many ways is the result of our general attitude towards success and failure, especially in a time of rising inequality. The book looks at the fallacy of being self-made, he argues that there is no such thing as a self-made individual. 

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Studio B, Unscripted: With Ken Loach and Edouard Louis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J89RTrx1_eM 

Rodman Philbrick's wholesome young adult novel is about two young boys in the seventh grade named Kevin and Max. Max is super tall and strong but can barely read. Kevin on the other hand is extremely intelligent, a kind of child prodigy genius with a physical disability where his organs grow faster than his bones. Both of them are bullied and outcast at school for different reasons. This is a wholesome story about their unlikely f...

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel is narrated from the perspective of Nick Carraway. Nick looks back at the summer of 1922 when he met Jay Gatsby, a man with an extraordinary gift for hope. Gatsby is in love with Nick's cousin Daisy, who is married to the wealthy and arrogant Tom Buchanan. At its heart, this novel is a love story. But one that explores the role that economic and social class divide plays in love and marriage.

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