Refugee Week - Reading List

 

 

Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric, cast of characters.

 

At the heart of this astonishing, soul-wrenching novel is a true story of courage and endurance in the face of one of the most brutal civil wars the world has ever known.

 

Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later, in a climate of growing unrest, tragedy strikes fifteen year old Laila, who must leave her home and join Mariam's unhappy household.

 

Alone and fending for themselves in a Poland devastated by World War Two, Jan and his three homeless friends cling to the silver sword as a symbol of hope.

 

Alem is on holiday with his father for a few days in London.  He has never been out of Ethiopia before and is very excited.  They have a great few days together until one morning when Alem wakes up in the bed and breakfast they are staying at to find the unthinkable.

 

 

 

 

At times terrifying, and at times astonishing, this is a true story with all the passion and grandeur of a novel.

 

Wise, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, "Persepolis" tells the story of Marjane Satrapi's life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution and the devastating effects of war with Iraq.

 

Alek Wek grew up in the Sudan in the midst of the vicious civil war. Now, at age 28, she is one of the most sought-after supermodels in the world, and has single-handedly changed the traditional concept of what is beautiful in the West.

 

From a childhood survivor of Cambodia's brutal Pol Pot regime comes a narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit. Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official.

 

 

 

Caroline Moorehead has visited war zones, camps and prisons from Guinea and Afghanistan to Texas and Italy, and has interviewed emigration officials and members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva while investigating the fates of the 17 million people currently displaced from their homes.

 

Some go to Tibet seeking inspiration, others for adventure. The award-winning journalist, Claire Scobie, found both when she left her ordinary life in London and went to the Himalayas in search of a rare red lily.

 

When Azar Nafisi was fired from Tehran University (where she was teaching English literature) because she refused to wear a veil, she gathered a group of her female students and resumed her classes at home, privately and discreetly.

 

...But it feels like another war is still being fought here...a war against women. They are trafficked like cargo, and traded like stock; the price for each calculated according to how much profit can be extracted from her afterwards.'