Nora
Subtitle: None
Publisher: Xlibris
Published: July 16, 2013
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 450
ISBN-13: 9781483646299
Description: Ahmad A. Sbaiti’s Fictional Tale Tells a Love-Hate Relationship Between People of Different Backgrounds  
A love story that weaves together by centuries of history, politics, and religion
CARROLLTON, Texas – (Release Date TBD) –Nora is the story of a seemingly impossible love between a young Muslim woman from South Lebanon, Nora, and a young Jewish man from Argentina, Neal. The story traces their lives and those of their families, for six decades beginning in 1912, in three countries on three continents and against a backdrop of their religious, cultural and political differences. 
Three generations of Nora’s family’s lives are brought to life to shed light on their customs, habits and mores, which  lead Nora to evolve into the ardent Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist that she becomes. 

Neal has two families, both of which are also explored. The first, in the United States, is that of his birth parents, an American Catholic woman and a Moroccan Muslim man. However, when he’s still a young boy, Neal’s father dies, and Neal is abducted from his mother by her second husband, a Jewish Zionist, who takes Neal to Argentina and starts the second family. Neal’s adoptive father changes Neal’s identity and raises him as a Jew that is pro-Israel and anti-Arab.    
 
Years later, when Nora and Neal meet for the first time in the two-year Arab Studies program at Princeton University, they hone their debating skills and their knowledge of the history of the Middle East by arguing their own positions against the other’s, mainly on major events and issues in fifteen hundred years of Islamic- Western relations and in their continuing effects on today’s ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. 

During the two years of opposing each other’s arguments and understanding how the other thinks, Nora and Neal build, first, respect for each other, and then affection, though each tries to deny any such feelings as completely inappropriate.  Finally, they manage to bend their intellects in concordance with their hearts and together, to work out a plan to overcome their own and their families’ objections to a permanent match between them. One hopes for such a plan as a path to peace and harmony in the Middle East.    

For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to www.Xlibris.com.

About the Author
When Ahmad Sbaiti is not incorporating his editor’s notes into a manuscript, he is at his computer writing one. Nora is the first of three works of fiction that are ready for publication, the other two being: 22 Days in October, and Bitter Harvest. Manuscripts of another three works of fiction are in various stages of completion: The Pastor, The Two Brothers, and The End of the Miracle. Ahmad is retired from a forty-year career in country development and international finance. He holds a doctorate degree in operations research and control systems. Since his retirement in 2010, he lives between Carrollton, Texas and his village in South Lebanon.

NORA * by Ahmad A. Sbaiti
Publication Date: July 16, 2013
Trade Paperback; $23.99; 450 pages; 978-1-4836-4629-9
Trade Hardback; $34.99; 450 pages; ISBN
eBook; $3.99; 978-1-4836-4630-5
To request a complimentary paperback review copy, contact the publisher at (888) 795-4274 x. 7879.  To purchase copies of the book for resale, please fax Xlibris at (812) 355-4079 or call (888) 795-4274 x. 7879.

For more information, contact Xlibris at (888) 795-4274 or on the web at w
Table of contents: title: Book One: Nora and Neal: First Encounter; title: Book Two: Nora, The Big Secret; title: Book Three: Sharon, Rached and Austin; the boy in the Middle; title: Book four: Princeton, Daily encounter'; title: Book Five: Neal, The Other Big Secret; title: Book Six: Marriage; title: Book Seven: Closure