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In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel s 1970s glory days an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the Paris of Central Asia . Of Abida, who became the first female chef after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-somethings who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy only to see the Taliban come roaring back in 2021.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003eThrough these intimate portraits of Afghan life, the story of a hotel becomes the story of a people.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Hutchinson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40963834773539,"sku":null,"price":999.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0281\/3607\/9395\/files\/81w9Hb_vWCL._SL1500.jpg?v=1759297922"},{"product_id":"daughters-of-the-bamboo-grove","title":"Daughters of the Bamboo Grove","description":"\u003cdiv data-testid=\"description\" class=\"BookPageMetadataSection__description\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"TruncatedContent\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"TruncatedContent__text TruncatedContent__text--large TruncatedContent__text--expanded\" data-testid=\"contentContainer\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"DetailsLayoutRightParagraph\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"DetailsLayoutRightParagraph__widthConstrained\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Formatted\"\u003eIn 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents. What they didn't know - and what award-winning journalist Barbara Demick uncovered in 2007, while working as a correspondent in Beijing - was that their daughter had been snatched from her beloved family and her identical twin. Under China's one-child policy hundreds of poor Chinese were giving up their children due to soaring fines and threats of violence. More sinister still, international demand for adoptees was sky-rocketing, and local officials were forcibly seizing children and trafficking them to orphanages, who were selling them abroad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDaughters of the Bamboo Grove\u003c\/i\u003e tells the gripping story of separated twins, their respective fates in China and the USA, and Barbara Demick's role in reuniting them against huge odds. Painting a rich portrait of China's history and culture, it asks questions about the roots, impact and consequences of China's one-child policy, the ethics of international adoption, and, ultimately, the assumptions and narratives we hold about the quality of lives lived in the East and the West.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40992780353571,"sku":null,"price":899.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0281\/3607\/9395\/files\/51oPTRj4tTL._SY522.jpg?v=1760958385"},{"product_id":"art-cure-the-science-of-how-the-arts-transform-our-health","title":"Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMany of us consider making and consuming art to be a hobby, or even a luxury. 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They've been using fire since prehistoric times. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence, but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, other species, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, UK, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, those in Amedi, Iraq that can change sex as they get to a certain age, the laurel rainforests of the Canary Islands regulating water cycles, and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. A recent big surprise has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we trees, which were thought to produce methane, actually consume it. 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