My Library; The Hand of Fatima;

The Hand Of Fatima; Ildefonso Falcones; published in Spain 2009.

The Hand of Fatima, I.Falcones marks the four hundredth anniversary of the expulsion of the Moors from seventeenth century Spain.

Moors and Christians have been enemies for centuries, this is the story.
Religious wars are the worst, they defy everything Religion  preaches. It is the story of Spain, the struggle between two religions, bloody for the people involved, for  kings and clergy a macabre game to satisfy their lust for power.

Not much has changed. Religious wars are still raving and power struggles are still well alive.
In 1948 we have witnessed the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their country and land. It was taken over by an other tribe. The powerful in politics from the whole world have watched this with eyes wide open and have silently acknowledged the expulsion of the Palestinian people.

I highly recommend this book, if you like history.
1564, the kingdom of Granada, after years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms against their masters
and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims

My Library; A Novel, Someone Knows My Name;

Someone Knows My Name; by Lawrence Hill;

It was originally published in Canada under the title The Book of Negroes;

Slavery in any form is a very dark and shameful mark through all the centuries on the people of all races who were involved in buying, selling and owning other human beings.

The magnitude of these crimes will never be forgotten or extenuated.

From Page 234

The people of Great Britain and other seafearing nations have devised unspeakable punishment

for the children of Ham, but in that moment and in that time, none seemed worse than their own self-inflicted torture: to sit unmoving but forbidden to sleep, in a cavernous room with arching stone and forbidden windows while a small man adopted a monotone for the better part of a

villainous hour.

From Page 452

In the endless grey of London, I missed the colours and tastes of my homeland. I found bread and meat uninteresting and unpalatable and I wondered how it was that people who sailed the oceans and ruled the world cared nothing for food and how to prepare it.

Londoners ate hardly any fruit at all. I missed the bananas, limes oranges and pineapples of Sierra Leone. I especially missed the malaguetta peppers....

Gail Anderson-Dargatz, her words about this novel;

A novel that should be sung rather than read. It is a song of worship, in praise of the taste of an orange, the smell of a newborn; and it is a lament to the horrors we are capable of inflicting on each other, no matter what colour of our skin.