Books about Portobello from Amazon.com

How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves—even if we are unsure of who we are?

That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well—or hardly at all. Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.

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Price: $3.81 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This work is suitable for readers of George Packer's "The Assassin's Gate", Asne Seierstad's "The Bookseller of Kabul", Christina Lamb's "The Sewing Circles of Herat", Jason Burke's "Al Qaeda", Rory Stewart's "The Places In-Between", Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell", and Azir Nafisi's "Reading Lolita In Tehran." What happens when the War on Terror media circus packs up and leaves town? Sarah Chayes has spent the past six years in Afghanistan in order to find out. Living in the old capital Kandahar, dressing like a man, and befriending the heroic Chief of Police, Akrem, she gains unparalleled access to tribal leaders, cunning warlords, jihadist insurgents and opium traders, as well as politicians, security chiefs and Pakistani Intelligence agents - all contending for power in this uniquely strategic place at a pivotal moment in its history. Hers is an urgent book, and a mesmerizingly readable story..
Price: $14.61 [Notify me when price goes down.]

La Bruja de Portobello relata la vida de Athena mediante la gente que la conocía bien o que no la conocía nada. Entre ellos, su madre adoptiva, un periodista, una sacerdotisa, un historiador y una actriz. Cada persona ilustra un aspecto diferente del carácter de Athena, describiendo lo que vieron y experimentaron y también compartiendo sus propias impresiones, creencias e inquietudes.

Edda, sacerdotisa:
"El gran problema de Athena era ser una mujer del siglo XXII, viviendo en el siglo XXI, permitiendo que todos lo viesen. ¿Pagó un precio? Sin duda. Pero habría pagado un precio mucho más alto si hubiera reprimido su exuberancia."

Andrea McCain, actriz:
"No me sorprende que su vida terminara de esa manera: vivía flirteando con el peligro . . . Athena era consciente de su carisma, e hizo sufrir a todos los que la amaron. Incluso a mí."

Heron Ryan, periodista:
"Las personas crean una realidad y después se vuelven víctimas de ella. Athena se reveló contra eso y pagó un precio alto."

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Price: $7.91 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The finest living Africa correspondent delivers, after a lifetime's close observation of the miraculous continent, a landmark book on life and death in modern Africa.Dowden has now, after 35 years on the continent, written a memoiristic history of its peoples' experiences in the wake of the European withdrawal and the superpowers' arrival. He has been present at each of the continent's major crises and writes illuminatingly about them, but he is as passionate about the warmth, wisdom and joy he has encountered in peacetime, and the diversity of habits, attitudes and purposes to which he has been Britain's best witness. His book is no less than a benchmark publication on this most misunderstood and mishandled of continents..
Price: $33.08 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Produced behind closed doors, disposed of discreetly, hidden by euphemism, excrement is rarely out in the open in 'civilised' society, but the world of waste - and the people who deal with it, work with it and in it - is a rich one. This book takes us underground to the sewers of Paris and London and overground, to meet the heroes of India's sanitation movement, the Japanese genius at the cutting edge of toilet technology, and the biosolids lobbying team. With a journalist's nose for a story, and a campaigner's desire for change, Rose George also addresses the politics of this under-reported social and environmental effluent, and the consequences of our reluctance to talk about it. Witty, serious and original, "The Big Necessity" proves that excrement doesn't have to be - and shouldn't be - a dirty word..
Price: $19.01 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is a strong B-format paperback package - designed to appeal to readers of literary survival memoirs It is a winner of both of France's most trustworthy literary prizes - those voted for by ordinary readers: the Prix des Lectrices d'Elle and the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens. The film is directed by Claude "Class Trip" Miller and starring Ludivine Sagnier and Julie Depardieu premiered in Cannes and should be on general release in 2008. The rights are already sold into ten other languages: Germany (Suhrkamp), Italy (Bompiani), Japan (Shinchosha), Spain (Tusquets), Netherlands (De Geus), Greece (Plethron), Israel (Matar), Korea (Prunsoop), Taiwan (Ten Points), Romania (Trei)."The day after I turned fifteen, I finally discovered what I'd always known..."Growing up in post-war Paris the sickly only child of glamorous, athletic parents, the narrator invents for himself a make-believe brother - older, stronger, and more brilliant than he can ever be. It is only when the boy begins talking to an old family friend that he comes to realise that his imaginary sibling had a real predecessor: a half-brother whose death in the concentration camps is part of a buried family secret that he was intended never to unearth..
Price: $4.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A dramatisation of the complexities of post-apartheid South - a white man exploring his psyche with a member of race he tried to annihilate .
Price: $3.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A bracing and beguiling quest for the world's deepest, purest snowfall that takes us from carrot-nosed snowmen in frosty gardens to the most perilous peaks on earth - a book that does for the white stuff what Robert Macfarlane did for mountains.In this unique book, part eulogy, part history, part travelogue, Charlie English goes in search of the best snow on the planet. Along the way he explains the extraordinary hold this commonplace phenomenon has over us, and reveals the ongoing drama of our relationship with it. Combining on-the-slopes experience with off-piste research, Charlie English's journey begins with the magical moment when his two-year old son sees snow for the first time, before setting off in the footsteps of the Romantic poets over the Alps, following the sled-tracks of the Inuit across Greenland, and meeting up with a flurry of fellow enthusiasts, from snow-making scientists in Japan and global warming experts at Caltech to plough drivers in Alaska. This is a book for anyone who reaches for their mittens at the sight of the first flake..
Price: $20.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]