AROUND THE WORLD IN 100 BOOKS

AROUND THE WORLD

Brought to you by Kaitlin Sferrazzo, Glasgow School Librarian



ANGOLA

GRANMA NINETEEN AND THE SOVIET’S SECRET by ONDJAKI: By the
beaches of Luanda, the Soviets are building a grand mausoleum in honour
of the Comrade President. Granmas are whispering: houses, they say, will
be dexploded, and everyone will have to leave. With the help of his friends
Charlita and Pi (whom everyone calls 3.14), and with assistance from Dr.
Rafael KnockKnock, the Comrade Gas Jockey, the amorous Gudafterov,
crazy Sea Foam, and a ghost, our young hero must decide exactly how
much trouble he’s willing to face to keep his Granma safe in Bishop’s Beach.

Energetic and colourful, impish and playful, Granma Nineteen and the
Soviet’s Secret is a charming coming-of-age story from the next rising star in
African literature.

A GENERAL THEORY OF OBLIVION by JOSE EDUARDO AGUALUSA:
On the eve of Angolan independence an agoraphobic woman named Ludo
bricks herself into her apartment for 30 years, living off vegetables and the
pigeons she lures in with diamonds, burning her furniture and books to stay
alive and writing her story on the apartment’s walls.

Almost as if we’re eavesdropping, the history of Angola unfolds through the
stories of those she sees from her window. As the country goes through
various political upheavals from colony to socialist republic to civil war to
peace and capitalism, the world outside seeps into Ludo’s life through
snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of someone peeing
on a balcony, or a man fleeing his pursuers.

A CERTAIN CURVE OF HORN: THE HUNDRED-YEAR QUEST FOR THE
GIANT SABLE
ANTELOPE OF ANGOLA by JOHN FREDERICK WALKER: In A Certain
Curve of Horn, veteran journalist John Frederick Walker tells the story of one
of the most revered and endangered of the regal beasts of Africa: the giant
sable antelope of Angola, a majestic, coal-black quadruped with breath-
taking curved horns over five feet long. It is an enthralling and tragic tale of
exploration and adventure, politics and war, the brutal realities of life in Africa
today and the bitter choices of conflicting conservation strategies.
A Certain Curve of Horn traces the sable's emergence as a highly sought-
after natural history prize before the First World War, and follows its struggle
to survive in a war zone fought over by the troops of half a dozen nations,
and its transformation into a political symbol and conservation icon. As he
follows the trail of this mysterious animal, Walker interweaves the stories of
the adventurers, scientists, and warriors who have come under the thrall of
the beast, and how their actions would shape the fate of the giant sable
antelope and the history of the war-torn nation that is its only home.

BOTSWANA

THE DELTA by TONY PARK: Assassin-for-hire Sonja Kurtz is on the run.
Kurtz, an ex-soldier turned mercenary, is given a high profile job—to kill the
president of Zimbabwe. But it's a set up, the assassination attempt fails, Kurtz
has been burned and her exfiltration plan are in ruins. Kurtz now heads for her
only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta in the heart of Botswana. Determined
to lay low and take it easy, Sonja discovers that her beloved Delta is on the
brink of destruction. In a bid to halt a project that would destroy the Delta's
fragile network of swamps and waterways, she is recruited as an
‘eco-commando.'

.

Soon she finds herself caught between her ex-lover Sterling, Martin Steele, her
mercenary commander, and a TV wildlife documentary host ‘Coyote' Sam
Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone wrong. Instead
of escaping her violent past, Sonja is now surrounded by men who are relying
on her killer instincts. Having come to peace, she finds herself in the midst of a
deadly war… and it is not only the survival of the Delta that is at stake.

THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY by ALEXANDER MCCALL
SMITH: Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies’
Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor
Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming
series, Mma Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with
wisdom, and good humor—not to mention help from her loyal assistant,
Grace Makutsi, and the occasional cup of tea.

Meet Mma Ramotswe, the endearing, engaging, simply irresistible
proprietress of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the first and only
detective agency in Botswana. With persistent observation, gentle intuition,
and a keen desire to help people with the problems of their lives, she
solves mysteries great and small for friends and strangers alike.

WILD LIFE: DISPATCHES FROM A CHILDHOOD OF BABOONS AND
BUTTON-DOWNS by KEENA ROBERTS: Keena Roberts split her adolescence
between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous
halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked
over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents
were studying. But for the months of the year when her family lived in the United
States, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the far more treacherous
landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy.

Most girls Keena's age didn't spend their days changing truck tires, baking their
own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They
also didn't carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves
unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena's parents were
famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and
Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always
far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing
with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.

DEMOCRATIC REPULIC
OF CONGO

CONGO INC by IN KOLI JEAN BOFANE: Isookanga, a Congolese
Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His
vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game
where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means
possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide.

Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating
capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a
Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism,
colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II.
Told with just enough levity to make it truly heart-breaking, Congo Inc. is a
searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.

DANCING IN THE GLORY OF MONSTERS: THE COLLAPSE OF THE
CONGO AND THE GREAT WAR OF AFRICA by JASON STEARNS: At the
heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering
nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and
unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic
proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply
reported book, Jason Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood
conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it.
He depicts village pastors who survived massacres, the child soldier assassin
of President Kabila, a female Hutu activist who relives the hunting and
methodical extermination of fellow refugees, and key architects of the war
that became as great a disaster as--and was a direct consequence of--the
genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Through their stories, he tries to
understand why such mass violence made sense, and why stability has been
so elusive.

.

Through their voices, and an astonishing wealth of knowledge and research,
Stearns chronicles the political, social, and moral decay of the Congolese
State.

KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST: A STORY OF GREED, TERROR, AND
HEROISM IN COLONIAL AFRICA by ADAM HOCHSCHILD: In the late
nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa
apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium
took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo
River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole
its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that
would reduce the population by half. While he did all this, he carefully con-
structed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian.

King Leopold's Ghost is the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful
of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly
found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning
away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild
brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those
responsible for this atrocity.

EGYPT

THE MAP OF LOVE by AHDAF SOUEIF: At either end of the twentieth
century, two women fall in love with men outside their familiar worlds. In
1901, Anna Winterbourne, recently widowed, leaves England for Egypt, an
outpost of the Empire roiling with nationalist sentiment. Far from the comfort
of the British colony, she finds herself enraptured by the real Egypt and in
love with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi.

Nearly a hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, a divorced American
journalist and descendant of Anna and Sharif has fallen in love with Omar
al-Ghamrawi, a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American conductor with his
own passionate politics. In an attempt to understand her conflicting
emotions and to discover the truth behind her heritage, Isabel, too, travels
to Egypt, and enlists Omar's sister's help in unravelling the story of Anna
and Sharif's love.

ANATOMY OF A DISAPPEARANCE by HISHAM MATAR: Nuri is a young
boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that
her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his
father. Until they meet Mona, sitting in her yellow swimsuit by the pool of the
Magda Marina hotel. As soon as Nuri sees her, the rest of the world vanish-
es. But it is Nuri’s father with whom Mona falls in love and whom she even-
tually marries. And their happiness consumes Nuri to the point where he
wishes his father would disappear.

Nuri will, however, soon regret what he wished for. His father, long a
dissident in exile from his homeland, is taken under mysterious circum-
stances. And, as the world that Nuri and his stepmother share is shattered
by events beyond their control, they begin to realize how little they knew
about the man they both loved.

THE CAIRO AFFAIR by OLEN STEINHAUER: Sophie Kohl is living her worst
nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at
the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in
Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent,
has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears
the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband
has been assassinated.

Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to
play the game. Foreign agents pass him occasional information, he returns the
favor, and everyone's happy. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples
all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fall-out wherever it leads.
American analyst Jibril Aziz knows more about Stumbler, a covert operation re-
jected by the CIA, than anyone. So when it appears someone else has obtained a
copy of the blueprints, Jibril alone knows the danger it represents.

As these players converge in Cairo in The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer's
masterful manipulations slowly unveil a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of
loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where
allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.

ETHIOPIA

BENEATH THE LION’S GAZE by MAAZA MENGISTE: This memorable,
heart-breaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a
revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother’s prayer room, pleading to his god for
an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father,
Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a
victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu’s youngest son,
has joined an underground resistance movement—a choice that will lead to
more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.

Beneath the Lion’s Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love
and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction.
It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and
the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and
indelibly tragic, Beneath The Lion’s Gaze is a transcendent and powerful
debut.

CUTTING FOR STONE by ABRAHAM VERHESE: Marion and Shiva Stone
are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a
brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their
mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a
preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come
of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear
them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland.
He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an
underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to
him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he
thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and
the brother who betrayed him.

HOW TO READ THE AIR by DINAW MENGESTU: One early September
afternoon, Yosef and Mariam, young Ethiopian immigrants who have spent
all but their first year of marriage apart, set off on a road trip from their new
home in Peoria, Illinois, to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of a new identity
as an American couple. Soon, their son, Jonas, will be born in Illinois.

Thirty years later, Yosef has died, and Jonas needs to make sense of the
volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. How can he
envision his future without knowing what has come before? Leaving behind
his marriage and job in New York, Jonas sets out to retrace his mother and
father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the
war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today, a
story - real or invented - that holds the possibility of reconciliation and
redemption.

GHANA

HOMEGOING by YAA GYASI: Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into
different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Eng-
lishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Un-
beknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's
dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming
slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchil-
dren will be raised in slavery.

One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of
warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave
trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children
into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the
Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs
and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present
day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and
stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the
soul of a nation.

GHANA MUST GO by TAIYE SELASI: Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned
surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his
home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku’s death sends a ripple around
the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana
Must Go is their story. Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must
Go is a testament to the transformative power of unconditional love, from a
debut novelist of extraordinary talent.

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Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts
the Sais’ circuitous journey to one another. In the wake of Kweku’s death, his
children gather in Ghana at their enigmatic mother’s new home. The eldest
son and his wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; the baby sister, now a young
woman: each carries secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming
together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told,
the crimes committed in the name of love. Splintered, alone, each navigates
his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered—until, in
Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge.

LOSE YOUR MOTHER: A JOURNEY ALONG THE ATLANTIC SLAVE
TRADE ROUTE by SAIDIYA HARTMAN: There were no survivors of Hart-
man's lineage, nor far-flung relatives in Ghana of whom she had come in
search. She travelled to Ghana in search of strangers. The most universal
definition of the slave is a stranger--torn from kin and country. To lose your
mother is to suffer the loss of kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world
as a stranger. As both the offspring of slaves and an American in Africa,
Hartman, too, was a stranger.

Her reflections on history and memory unfold as an intimate encounter with
places--a holding cell, a slave market, a walled town built to repel slave
raiders--and with people: an Akan prince who granted the Portuguese
permission to build the first permanent trading fort in West Africa; an
adolescent boy who was kidnapped while playing; a fourteen-year-old girl
who was murdered aboard a slave ship.

LIBYA

THE ARAB OF THE FUTURE: A CHILDHOOD IN THE MIDDLE EAST,
1978-1984 by RIAD SATTOUF:

Riad, delicate and wide-eyed, follows in the trail of his mismatched parents;
his mother, a bookish French student, is as modest as his father is
flamboyant. Venturing first to the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab
State and then joining the family tribe in Homs, Syria, they hold fast to the
vision of the paradise that always lies just around the corner.

And hold they do, though food is scarce, children kill dogs for sport, and
with locks banned, the Sattoufs come home one day to discover another
family occupying their apartment. The ultimate outsider, Riad, with his
flowing blond hair, is called the ultimate insult… Jewish. And in no time at
all, his father has come up with yet another grand plan, moving from
building a new people to building his own great palace.

THE RETURN: FATHERS, SONS, AND THE LAND IN BETWEEN by
HISHAM MATAR: The Return is at once a universal and an intensely
personal tale. It is an exquisite meditation on how history and politics can
bear down on an individual life. And yet Hisham Matar's memoir isn't just
about the burden of the past, but the consolation of love, literature and art. It
is the story of what it is to be human.

Hisham Matar was nineteen when his father was kidnapped and taken to
prison in Libya. He would never see him again. Twenty-two years later, the
fall of Gaddafi meant he was finally able to return to his homeland. In this
moving memoir, the author takes us on an illuminating journey, both physical
and psychological; a journey to find his father and rediscover his country.

MAPS OF THE SOUL by AHMED FAGIH: Othman al-Sheikh is running away
from the shadows of his past life in a small dusty village in the Libyan De-
sert. Tripoli, meanwhile, is a city in the process of transformation, moulded
to the will of its Italian colonisers. Its decadent entertainments and extrava-
gant riches conceal an underbelly of abject poverty and ruthless plotting.
Othman falls for the city and its temptations. With a natural instinct for sur-
vival, he tries his luck in the capital, swept along by chance and opportunity.

Set in the early 1930s, Maps of the Soul immerses the reader in a different
Libya, a country emerging from fierce resistance wars and presided over by
the charismatic colonialist Italo Balbo with his dreams of a new Rome on the
Fourth Shore, the crowning glory of the fascist dream. Against this backdrop,
the story unfolds, one of painful survival in the face of defeated dreams. This
volume contains the first three books of Fagih’s monumental twelve part
work, ending as Othman finally leaves Tripoli behind, a city at the mercy of
political wrangling and war.

MALI

RUMOURS by MONGANE WALLY SEROTE: Keke, a veteran MK cadre
who was once the CEO of a cellphone company, wakes up one day to find his
life in ruins. He has lost his job and his wife, and he has become more and
more reliant on the solace of alcohol. After hitting rock bottom, Keke is thrust
into a spiritual journey. He meets Ami, a shaman from Mali, and travels there,
where he is "cooked" and cleansed in a "meeting" with his ancestors. Only
when he is healed, and understands his role in the context of a post-apartheid
South Africa, can Keke make a careful comeback to his country to re-join his
wife and comrades. The global village, the African continent and South Africa
are the platforms where Keke's life unfolds in the 21st century. Dr Serote's writ-
ing was inspired by the late Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart. It was
through reading this novel that Serote realised that everything he had read be-
fore was about things he had not experienced himself. One of the main themes
in is that of traditional healing – a theme Serote is very familiar with as he was
called by his ancestors to become a traditional healer.

THE BAD-ASS LIBRARIANS OF TIMBUKTU by JOSHUA HAMMER: In
the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel
Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River,
tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular
manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of
Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist
and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the
world’s greatest and most brazen smugglers.

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In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of
most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the
hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened
to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over
Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000
volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali.

WALKING WITH ABEL by ANNA BADKHEN: In Walking with Abel, Badkhen
embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys—nomadic herders in Mali’s
Sahel grasslands—as they embark on their annual migration across the
savanna. It’s a cycle that connects the Fulani to their past even as their
present is increasingly under threat—from Islamic militants, climate change,
and the ever-encroaching urbanization that lures away their young. The Fulani,
though, are no strangers to uncertainty—brilliantly resourceful and resilient,
they’ve contended with famines, droughts, and wars for centuries.

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Dubbed “Anna Ba” by the nomads, who embrace her as one of theirs,
Badkhen narrates the Fulani’s journeys and her own with compassion and
keen observation, transporting us from the Neolithic Sahara crisscrossed by
rivers and abundant with wildlife to obelisk forests where the Fulani’s Stone
Age ancestors painted tributes to cattle. As they cross the Sahel, they
accompany themselves with Fulani music they download to their cell phones
and tales of herders and hustlers, griots and holy men, infused with the myths
the Fulani tell themselves to ground their past, make sense of their identity,
and safeguard their—our—future.

MOROCCO

THIS BLINDING ABSENCE OF LIGHT by TAHAR BEN JELLOUN: An
immediate and critically acclaimed bestseller in France, This Blinding
Absence of Light is Tahar Ben Jelloun's crafting of a horrific real-life
narrative into a work of fiction. He tells the appalling story of the desert
concentration camps in which King Hassan II of Morocco held his political
enemies. Not until September 1991, under international pressure, was
Hassan's regime forced to open these desert hellholes.

A handful of survivors—living cadavers who had shrunk by over a foot in
height—emerged from the six-by-three-foot cells in which they had been
held underground for decades. Working closely with one of the survivors,
Ben Jelloun eschewed the traditional novel format and wrote a book in the
simplest of language, reaching always for the most basic of words, the
most correct descriptions.

IN ARABIAN NIGHTS: A CARAVAN OF MOROCCAN DREAMS by TA-
HIR SHAH: In this entertaining and penetrating book, Tahir sets out on a
bold new journey across Morocco that becomes an adventure worthy of
the mythical Arabian Nights.

As he wends his way through the labyrinthine medinas of Fez and Marra-
kesh, traverses the Sahara sands, and tastes the hospitality of ordinary
Moroccans, Tahir collects a dazzling treasury of traditional stories,
gleaned from the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights. The tales, re-
counted by a vivid cast of characters, reveal fragments of wisdom and an
oriental way of thinking that is both enthralling and fresh. A link in the
chain of scholars and teachers who have passed these stories down for
centuries like a baton in a relay race, Shah reaches layers of culture that
most visitors hardly realize exist, and eventually discovers the
story living in his own heart.

SECRET SON by LAILA LALAMI: Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only
home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by
his mother in a one-room home, the film stars flickering on the local cinema's
screen offer the only glimmer of hope to his frustrated dreams of escape.
Until, that is, the father he thought dead turns out to be very much alive.

A high profile businessman with wealth to burn, Nabil is disenchanted with
his daughter and eager to take in the boy he never knew. Soon Youssef is
installed in his penthouse and sampling the gold-plated luxuries enjoyed by
Casablanca's elite. But as he leaves the slums of his childhood behind him,
he comes up against a starkly un-glittering reality...

NIGERIA

STAY WITH ME by AYOBAMI ADEBAYO: This celebrated, unforgettable
first novel, shortlisted for the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction and set
in Nigeria, gives voice to both husband and wife as they tell the story of
their marriage--and the forces that threaten to tear it apart.

Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at
university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and
Yejide have always agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into
their marriage--after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange
teas and unlikely cures--Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still
has time--until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they
introduce as Akin's second wife. Furious, shocked, and livid with jealousy,
Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant, which,
finally, she does--but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to
imagine.

THE FISHERMEN by CHIGOZIE OBIOMA: In a small town in western
Nigeria, four young brothers - the youngest is nine, the oldest fifteen - use
their strict father's absence from home to go fishing at a forbidden local
river. They encounter a dangerous local madman who predicts that the
oldest brother will be killed by another. This prophecy breaks their strong
bond and unleashes a tragic chain of events of almost mythic proportions.

Passionate and bold, The Fishermen is a breathtakingly beautiful novel
firmly rooted in the best of African storytelling. With this powerful debut,
Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the most original new voices of
modern African literature.

UNDER THE UDALA TREES by CHINELO OKPARANTA: Ijeoma comes of
age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war
breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets
another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from
different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.

When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part
of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.

As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming of
age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine
the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their
nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian
lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a
glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life
around truth and love.

SIERRA LEONE

RADIANCE OF TOMORROW by ISHMAEL BEAH: At the center
of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends
who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in
ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back,
Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up
their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles: a scarcity of
food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations
of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town’s water supply and
blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a
way to restore order, they’re forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their
past and future alike.

With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance
of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to
us, even in uncertain times.

THE BITE OF THE MANGO by MARIATU KAMARA: As a child in a small
rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by
family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant
worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she
never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children
themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless
violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside,
Mariatu miraculously survived.

The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her
desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms
reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living
adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the
streets of Freetown. As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland
has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and
Mariatu's eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the
pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope.

THE MEMORY OF LOVE by AMINATTA FORNA: In contemporary Sierra
Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to
keep. In the capital hospital, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons
that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies a
dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years
and has stories to tell that are far from heroic.

As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, these men are drawn
unwittingly closer by a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the
path of one woman at the center of their stories.

SOMALIA

THE ORCHARD OF LOST SOULS by NADIFA MOHAMED: It is 1988 and
Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds but still the
dictatorship remains secure. Soon, and through the eyes of three women,
we will see Somalia fall. Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp
she was born in, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes.

Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden
clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the
local police station.

Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the
rebellion growing in the north. And as the country is unravelled by a civil
war that will shock the world, the fates of the three women are twisted
irrevocably together.

KEEPING HOPE ALIVE by DR HAWA ABDI: Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother
Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a
massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from
war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government
collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to
providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and
poverty. She turned her 1300 acres of farmland into a camp that has
numbered up to 90,000 displaced people, ignoring the clan lines that have
often served to divide the country. She inspired her daughters, Deqo and
Amina, to become doctors. Together, they have saved tens of thousands of
lives in her hospital, while providing an education to hundreds of displaced
children.

In 2010, Dr. Abdi was kidnapped by radical insurgents, who also destroyed
much of her hospital, simply because she was a woman. She, along with
media pressure, convinced the rebels to let her go, and she demanded and
received a written apology.

THE MAYOR OF MOGADISHU by ANDREW HARDING: In The Mayor of
Mogadishu, one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents,
Andrew Harding, reveals the tumultuous life of Mohamoud “Tarzan” Nur - an
impoverished nomad who was abandoned in a state orphanage in newly
independent Somalia, and became a street brawler and activist. When the
country collapsed into civil war and anarchy, Tarzan and his young family
became part of an exodus, eventually spending twenty years in north
London.

But in 2010 Tarzan returned, as Mayor, to the unrecognizable ruins of a city
now almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militants of Al Shabab. For
many in Mogadishu, and in the diaspora, Tarzan became a galvanizing
symbol of courage and hope for Somalia. But for others, he was a divisive
thug, who sank beneath the corruption and clan rivalries that continue,
today, to threaten the country’s revival.

SOUTH AFRICA

BORN A CRIME by TREVOR NOAH: Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from
apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal
act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa
mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.
Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for
the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd
measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any
moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s
tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure,
living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries
-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a
restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was
never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship
with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate,
a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence,
and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

THE GIRL WHO SAVED THE KING OF SWEDEN by JONAS JONASSON:
Just because the world ignores you, doesn’t mean you can’t save it . .

Nombeko Mayeki was never meant to be a hero. Born in a Soweto shack, she
seemed destined for a short, hard life. But now she is on the run from the world
‘s most ruthless secret service, with three Chinese sisters, twins who are offi-
cially one person and an elderly potato farmer. Oh, and the fate of the King of
Sweden - and the world - rests on her shoulders.

As uproariously funny as Jonas Jonasson’s bestselling debut, this is an
entrancing tale of luck, love and international relations.

JUMP AND OTHER STORIES by NADINE GORDIMER: In these sixteen
stories ranging from the dynamics of family life to the worldwide confusion
of human values, Nadine Gordimer gives us access to many lives in places
as far apart as suburban London, Mozambique, a mythical island, and
South Africa.

In "Some Are Born to Sweet Delight, " a girl's innocent love for an
enigmatic foreign lodger in her parents' home leads her to involve others in
a tragedy of international terrorism. "The Moment Before the Gun Went Off"
reveals the strange mystery behind an accident in which a white farmer has
killed a black boy. "Once Upon a Time" is a horrifying fairy tale about a
child raised in a society founded on fear.

SUDAN

THEY POURED FIRE ON US FROM THE SKY by BENSON DENG:
Benjamin, Alepho, and Benson were raised among the Dinka tribe of
Sudan. Their world was an insulated, close-knit community of
grass-roofed cottages, cattle herders, and tribal councils. The lions and
pythons that prowled beyond the village fences were the greatest threat
they knew. All that changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin
began attacking their villages.

Amid the chaos, screams, conflagration, and gunfire, 5-year-old Benson
and 7-year-old Benjamin fled into the dark night. Two years later,
Alepho, age 7, was forced to do the same. Across the Southern Sudan,
over the next 5 years, thousands of other boys did likewise, joining this
stream of child refugees that became known as the Lost Boys. Their
journey would take them more than 1000 miles across a war-ravaged
country, through landmine-sown paths, crocodile-infested waters, and
grotesque extremes of hunger, thirst, and disease. The refugee camps
they eventually filtered through offered little respite from the brutality
they were fleeing.

THIRTEEN MONTHS OF SUNRISE by RANIA MAMOUN: Thirteen
Months of Sunrise is a collection of stories by the author, journalist,
and activist, Rania Mamoun. Rania was featured in previous PEN
Award winning project, The Book of Khartoum, the first ever anthology
of Sudanese short fiction in translation. The stories in this collection
have been translated from Arabic into English for the first time, by
translator Elisabeth Jacquette.

Thirteen Months of Sunrise is part of Comma's commitment to publish
writers in translation from 'banned nations' in 2018.

WHILE THE SUN IS ABOVE US by MELANIE SCHNELL: While The Sun
Is Above Us takes readers deep into the extraordinary world of Sudan
through the intertwined narratives of two women. In the midst of a bloody
civil war, Adut is brutally captured and held as a slave for eight years.
Sandra, fleeing her life in Canada, travels to South Sudan as an aid
worker but soon finds herself unwittingly embroiled in a violent local
conflict. When chance brings Adut and Sandra together in a brief but
profound moment, their lives change forever.

In captivating prose, Melanie Schnell offers imaginative insight into the
lives of innocents in a land at war, rendering horrific experiences with
exquisite clarity. While The Sun Is Above Us explores the immense power
of the imagination, the human desire for connection, and the endurance of
hope.

ZAMBIA

THE OLD DRIFT by NAMWALI SERPELL: On the banks of the Zambezi
River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a
colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the story of a small
African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest
nemesis.

In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter
named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles
the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle
of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white,
brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the
present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives – their triumphs,
errors, losses and hopes – form a symphony about what it means to be
human.

THE MOURNING BIRD by MUBANGA KALIMAMUKWENTO: When 11-
year-old Chimuka and her younger brother, Ali, find themselves orphaned in
the 1990s, it’s clear that their seemingly ordinary Zambian family is
brimming with secrets, from HIV/AIDS, infidelity, to suicide. Faced with the
difficult choice of living with their abusive extended family or slithering into
the dark underbelly of Lusaka’s streets, Chimuka and Ali escape and
become street kids.

Against the backdrop of a failed military coup, election riots and a declining
economy, Chimuka and Ali are raised by drugs, crime and police brutality.
As a teenager, Chimuka is caught between prostitution and the remnants of
the fragile stability that existed before her parents’ death.

THE GARDEN OF BURNING SAND by CORBAN ADDISON: On a dark
night in Lusaka, Zambia, an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. In shock,
she cannot speak. Her identity is a mystery. Where did she come from? Was
the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act?

The girl's case is taken up by Zoe Fleming, a human rights lawyer working in
Africa. A betrayal in her own past gives the girl's plight a special resonance
for Zoe, and she is determined to find the perpetrator and seek justice.

Also investigating on behalf of the Zambian police is Joseph Kabuta. At first
reluctant to work together, they team up. Yet their progress is thwarted at
every turn and it soon becomes clear that their opponents are every bit as
powerful and determined as they are corrupt.

ZIMBABWE

THE BOOK OF MEMORY by PETINA GAPPAH: Memory is an albino
woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare,
Zimbabwe, where she has been convicted of murder. As part of her appeal,
her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it.
As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and
convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who
was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death?
And did everything happen exactly as she remembers?

In The Book of Memory, Petina Gappah has created a uniquely slippery
narrator: forthright, acerbically funny, and with a complicated relationship to
the truth. Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the
rich, and between the past and the present, Gappah weaves a compelling
tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of
memory.

WE NEED NEW NAMES by NOVIOLET BULAWAYO: Darling is only ten
years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe,
Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's
belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed
by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for
dangerous jobs abroad.

But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels
to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that
her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut
calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come
before her--from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee--while she tells a
vivid, raw story all her own.

THE HAIRDRESSER OF HARARE by TENDAI HUCHU: Vimbai is the
best hairdresser in Mrs. Khumalo’s salon, and she is secure in her status
until the handsome, smooth-talking Dumisani shows up one day for work.
Despite her resistance, the two become friends, and eventually, Vimbai
becomes Dumisani’s landlady. He is as charming as he is deft with the
scissors, and Vimbai finds that he means more and more to her. Yet, by
novel’s end, the pair’s deepening friendship—used or embraced by
Dumisani and Vimbai with different futures in mind—collapses in
unexpected brutality.

The novel is an acute portrayal of a rapidly changing Zimbabwe. In addition
to Vimbai and Dumisani’s personal development, the book shows us how
social concerns shape the lives of everyday people.



ANTARCTICA

THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by KEVIN BROCKMEIER: The City
is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by
the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten.
But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out.
Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only
newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman
Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is
trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her
radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets
out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier
alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about
love, loss and the power of memory.

WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE by MARIA SEMPLE: Bernadette Fox
has vanished. When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a
reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws
herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live
the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown.
And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she
disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what
Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school
memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for
decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly
entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the
power of a daughter's love for her mother.

AN ANTARCTIC MYSTERY by JULES VERNE: In the year 1839, Mr.
Jeorling, whose geological and mineralogical research have led him to the
Kerguelen sub-Antarctic archipelago in the Indian Ocean, sets sail on the
"Halbrane", whose captain Len Guy is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe's
novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym".
In that narrative, Poe recounts the adventures of Len Guy's brother William
Guy who as captain of the "Jane" was persuaded by Arthur Gordon Pym to
direct an expedition to the Antarctic. The "Jane" vanished on this voyage,
though Pym was still able to pass along his diary to Edgar Allen Poe.
Increasingly persuaded of the truthfulness of the tale, Mr. Jeorling
encourages Captain Len Guy to pursue his brother - whom they believe may
still be alive - into the Antarctic. Aside from the natural perils of the ocean,
they must also face down a mutiny of the sailors on the "Halbrane".

ANTARCTICA

SOUTH POLE STATION by ASHLEY SHELBY: Most people have
problems. Some people literally go to the end of the Earth to avoid them.
Do you have digestion problems due to stress? Do you have problems with
authority? How many alcoholic drinks do you consume a week? Would you
rather be a florist or a truck driver?

These are the questions that decide who has what it takes to live at South
Pole Station, a place with an average temperature of -54degreeF and no
sunlight for six months a year. Cooper Gosling has just answered five
hundred of them. Her results indicate she is strange enough for Polar life.
Cooper's not sure if this is an achievement, but she knows she has nothing
to lose. Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, she's adrift at thirty and -
despite her early promise as a painter - on the verge of sinking her career.
So she accepts her place in the National Science Foundation's Artists &
Writers Program and flees to Antarctica - where she encounters a group of
misfits motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own.

SCOTT’S LAST EXPEDITION by ROBERT FALCON SCOTT: In November
1910, a ship called Terra Nova left New Zealand on its way south to
Antarctica. On board was an international team of explorers led by Robert
Falcon Scott, a man determined to be the first to reach the South Pole. A year
and a half later, Scott and three members of his team died during a brutal
blizzard.

Their dream of reaching the Pole first had already been dashed by the
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, and now on their return trip--slowed by
ill health and bad weather--Scott's party found themselves trapped in a tent
without sufficient provisions, while the wind howled endlessly outside. Even in
his final hours, Scott found the strength to continue the journal he'd started at
the beginning of his adventures; the diary was found beside his frozen body.

SHACKLETON: BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER by MICHAEL SMITH:
Ernest Shackleton is one of history’s great explorers, an extraordinary
character who pioneered the path to the South Pole over 100 years ago and
became a dominant figure in Antarctic discovery. A charismatic personality,
his incredible adventures on four expeditions have captivated generations
and inspired a dynamic, modern following in business leadership. None
more so than the Endurance mission, where Shackleton’s commanding
presence saved the lives of his crew when their ship was crushed by ice and
they were turned out on to the savage frozen landscape. But Shackleton
was a flawed character whose chaotic private life, marked by romantic
affairs, unfulfilled ambitions, overwhelming debts and failed business
ventures, contrasted with his celebrity status as a leading explorer.

Drawing on extensive research of original diaries and personal
correspondence, Michael Smith's definitive biography brings a fresh
perspective to our understanding of this complex man and the heroic age of
polar exploration.



AFGHANISTAN

A HOUSE WITHOUT WINDOWS by NADIA HASHIMI: For two decades,
Zeba was a loving wife, a patient mother, and a peaceful villager. But her quiet
life is shattered when her husband, Kamal, is found brutally murdered with a
hatchet in the courtyard of their home. Nearly catatonic with shock, Zeba is
unable to account for her whereabouts at the time of his death. Her children
swear their mother could not have committed such a heinous act. Kamal’s
family is sure she did, and demands justice. Barely escaping a vengeful mob,
Zeba is arrested and jailed.

Awaiting trial, she meets a group of women whose own misfortunes have led
them to these bleak cells. Is Zeba a cold-blooded killer, these young women
wonder, or has she been imprisoned, like them, for breaking some social rule?

Into this closed world comes Yusuf, Zeba’s Afghan-born, American-raised
lawyer whose commitment to human rights and desire to help his homeland
have brought him back. With the fate this seemingly ordinary housewife in his
hands, Yusuf discovers that, like the Afghanistan itself, his client may not be at
all what he imagines.

THE FAVORED DAUGHTER: ONE WOMAN’S FIGHT TO LEAD
AFGHANISTAN INTO THE FUTURE by FAWZIA KOOFI: The nineteenth
daughter of a local village leader in rural Afghanistan, Fawzia Koofi was left to
die in the sun after birth by her mother. But she survived, and perseverance in
the face of extreme hardship has defined her life ever since.

Despite the abuse of her family, the exploitative Russian and Taliban regimes,
the murders of her father, brother, and husband, and numerous attempts on
her life, she rose to become the first Afghani woman Parliament speaker.
Here, she shares her amazing story, punctuated by a series of poignant let-
ters she wrote to her two daughters before each political trip—letters describ-
ing the future and freedoms she dreamed of for them and for all the women of
Afghanistan.

AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED by KHALED HOSSEINI: So, then. You
want a story and I will tell you one...Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his
sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of
Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they
struggle together through poverty and brutal winters.

To Abdullah, Pari - as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she
was named - is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will
do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her
treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their heads
touching, their limbs tangled. One day the siblings journey across the desert
to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that
awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart;
sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand.

BANGLADESH

A GOLDEN AGE by TAHMIMA ANAM: As young widow Rehana Haque
awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Her
children are almost grown, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent
elections. Change is in the air.

But no one can foresee what will happen in the days and months that
follow. For this is East Pakistan in 1971, a country on the brink of war. And
this family's life is about to change forever.

Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, 'A
Golden Age' is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith, and
unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone must make choices.
And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face
a heartbreaking dilemma.

BANKER TO THE POOR by MUHAMMAD YUNUS: Banker to the Poor is
Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to
help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that
led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and
poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen.
He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join
him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day
our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible
thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from
the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and
inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy,
philanthropy, social history, and business.

THE STORM by ARIF ANWAR: Time is running out for Shahryar. His work
visa has expired and he may soon be forced out of the United States and
back to his home country of Bangladesh. Clinging to the remaining weeks he
has left with his young American daughter, Shar reflects upon his family’s
history, beginning in a village on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman,
Jamir, and his wife, Honufa, prepare to face a storm of historic proportions.

Spilling across tense, crucial moments in history, Jamir and Honufa’s story
intersects with other lives, like that of Ichiro, a Japanese pilot fighting in a
war he does not understand; Claire, a British doctor in danger during the
anti-colonialist Burmese rebellions; and Rahim and Zahira, a privileged
couple in Calcutta uprooted to East Pakistan by the Partition of India.

CAMBODIA

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN by VADDEY RATNER: For seven-
year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of
her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the
civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's
capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept
up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members,
starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining
vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her
father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and
justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival.
Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the
Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly
wrought tale of human resilience.

A DEADLY CAMBODIAN CRIME SPREE by SHAMINI FLINT: Inspector
Singh is in Cambodia - wishing he wasn't. He's been sent as an observer
to the international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, the latest effort
by his superiors to ensure that he is anywhere except in Singapore.

But for the first time the fat Sikh inspector is on the verge of losing his
appetite when a key member of the tribunal is murdered in cold blood.
The authorities are determined to write off the incident as a random act
of violence, but Singh thinks otherwise. It isn't long before he finds
himself caught up in one of the most terrible murder investigations he's
witnessed - the roots of which lie in the dark depths of the Cambodian
killing fields. . .

FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER: A DAUGHTER OF CAMBODIA
REMEMBERS by LOUNG UNG: One of seven children of a high-ranking
government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian
capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's
Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and,
eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp
for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived
the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of
a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and
love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

CHINA

DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING by MADELEINE THIEN: “In a single
year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the
second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old.”

At the centre of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming.
Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her
fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile
layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic
father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant
composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to
reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns
and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting
consequences.

INVISIBLE PLANETS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE
SF IN TRANSLATION edited by KEN LIU: Award-winning translator and
author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China.
Some stories have won awards; some have been included in various 'Year's
Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and
some are simply Ken's personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here
belong to the younger generation of 'rising stars'.

In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction.
Liu Cixin's essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All
Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own
rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen
Qiufan's The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors
trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them.
Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF,
asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE EAST by XIAOLU GUO: Xiaolu Guo meets
her parents for the first time when she is six. They are strangers to her.
When Xiaolu is born her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple
in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam
leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village
on the East China Sea. It’s a strange beginning.

Like a Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East
takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing
Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship,
underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a
scholarship to study in a picturesque British village. Now, after a decade in
Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only
come from someone who is both an outsider and at home.

INDIA

THE WINDFALL by DIKSHA BASU: For the past thirty years, Mr. and Mrs.
Jha’s lives have been defined by cramped spaces, cut corners, gossipy
neighbours, and the small dramas of stolen yoga pants and stale marriages.
They thought they’d settled comfortably into their golden years, pleased with
their son’s acceptance into an American business school. But then Mr. Jha
comes into an enormous and unexpected sum of money, and moves his wife
from their housing complex in East Delhi to the super-rich side of town, where
he becomes eager to fit in as a man of status: skinny ties, hired guards,
shoe-polishing machines, and all.

The move sets off a chain of events that rock their neighbours, their marriage,
and their son, who is struggling to keep a lid on his romantic dilemmas and
slipping grades, and brings unintended consequences, ultimately forcing the
Jha family to reckon with what really matters.

A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL by SUJATA MASSEY: Bombay, 1921:

Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her
father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a
legal education from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that
makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's rights.

Mistry Law is handling the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who
has left three widows behind. But as Perveen goes through the papers, she
notices something strange: all three have signed over their inheritance to a
charity. What will they live on if they forfeit what their husband left them? Perveen
is suspicious.

The Farid widows live in purdah: strict seclusion, never leaving the women's
quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an
unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate and realizes her instincts
about the will were correct when tensions escalate to murder. It's her responsibility
to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that nobody is in
further danger.

THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF THE SHERGILL SISTERS by BALLI
KAUR JASWAL:

British-Punjabi sisters Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina Shergill have never been
close. But now they’ve been thrown together on the strangest family holiday
of all time…

When their mother died, she had only one request: that her daughters take a
pilgrimage across India to carry out her final rites. Suddenly, the three are
packing their bags and heading to the airport, together for the first time in
years.

The sisters seem to have nothing in common, but they need each other now
more than ever. And as the miles rack up on their family road-trip, each of
them will make unexpected discoveries about themselves and each other.
After all, there are no secrets between sisters…

ISRAEL

SUDDENLY, A KNOCK ON THE DOOR by ETGAR KERET: Bringing up a
child, lying to the boss, placing an order in a fast-food restaurant: in Etgar
Keret's new collection, daily life is complicated, dangerous, and full of
yearning. In his most playful and most mature work yet, the living and the
dead, silent children and talking animals, dreams and waking life coexist in
an uneasy world.

Overflowing with absurdity, humour, sadness, and compassion, the tales
in Suddenly, a Knock on the Door establish Etgar Keret--declared a genius
by The New York Times--as one of the most original writers of his
generation.

MY PROMISED LAND by ARI SHAVIT: My Promised Land tells the story of

Israel as it has never been told before. Facing unprecedented internal and
external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Through
revealing stories of significant events and of ordinary individuals—pioneers,
immigrants, entrepreneurs, scientists, army generals, peaceniks, settlers, and
Palestinians—Israeli journalist Ari Shavit illuminates many of the pivotal moments
of the Zionist century that led Israel to where it is today.

We meet the youth group leader who recognized the potential of Masada as a
powerful symbol for Zionism; the young farmer who bought an orange grove from
his Arab neighbor in the 1920s, and with the Jaffa orange helped to create a
booming economy in Palestine; the engineer who was instrumental in developing
Israel’s nuclear program; the religious Zionists who started the settler movement.
Over an illustrious career that has spanned almost thirty years, Shavit has had
rare access to people from across the Israeli political, economic, and social
spectrum, and in this ambitious work he tells a riveting story that is both deeply
human and of profound historical dimension.

THE LEMON TREE by SANDY TOLAN: In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a
Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing
the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his
family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the
house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old
Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the
Holocaust.

On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare
friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next
thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in
1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously
resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan
brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level,
suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories
of hope and reconciliation.

JAPAN

THE TRAVELLING CAT CHRONICLES by HIRO ARIKAWA: Nana the cat
is on a road trip. He is not sure where he's going or why, but it means that he
gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side
by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting
Satoru's old friends. He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental
farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted
couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose
cat-loving wife has just left him. There's even a very special dog who forces
Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species.

But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in
Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won't say. But when Nana finally works
it out, his small heart will break...

CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by SAYAKA MURATA: Keiko has never
fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she
begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,” she finds peace
and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands
the rules of social interaction ― many are laid out line by line in the store’s
manual ― and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and
speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal” person excellently,
more or less.

Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It’s
almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very
happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers,
increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career,
prompting her to take desperate action…

JAPANESE TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION by EDOGAWA
RAMPO: Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination, the first volume of its kind
translated into English, is written with the quick tempo of the West but rich with
the fantasy of the East. These nine bloodcurdling, chilling tales present a genre
of literature largely unknown to readers outside Japan, including the strange
story of a quadruple amputee and his perverse wife; the record of a man who
creates a mysterious chamber of mirrors and discovers hidden pleasures within;
the morbid confession of a maniac who envisions a career of foolproof
"psychological" murders; and the bizarre tale of a chair-maker who buries
himself inside an armchair and enjoys the sordid "loves" of the women who sit
on his handiwork.

Lucid and packed with suspense, Edogawa Rampo's stories found in Japanese
Tales of Mystery & Imagination have enthralled Japanese readers for over half a
century.

KAZAKHSTAN

THE SILENT STEPPE by MUKHAMET SHAYAKHMETOV: This is a
first-hand account of the genocide of the Kazakh nomads in the 1920s and 30s.
Nominally Muslim, the Kazakhs and their culture owed as much to shamanism
and paganism as they did to Islam. Their ancient traditions and economy
depended on the breeding and herding of stock across the vast steppes of central
Asia, and their independent, nomadic way of life was anathema to the Soviets.

Seven-year-old Shayakhmetov and his mother and sisters were left to fend for
themselves after his father was branded a "kulak" (well-off peasant and thus
class enemy), stripped of his possessions, and sent to a prison camp where he
died. In the following years the family traveled thousands of miles across
Kazakhstan by foot, surviving on the charity of relatives. Told with dignity and
detachment, this central Asian Wild Swans awakens the reader to the scale of
suffering of millions of Kazakhs, and also astonishes and inspires as a most
singular survivor's tale.

DARK SHADOWS by JOANNA LILLIS: Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait

of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the
heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial
ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world
as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a
vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 13 years of
on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic
country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural
crossroads where East meets West.

Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corrup-
tion, this book explores how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself
into a potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the fall of the
USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters
brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarch to sleeping villagers, from principled
politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners.

PERFORMANCE ANOMALIES by VICTOR ROBERT LEE: Cono is a
startling young man of mixed and haunting heritage who has been gifted – or
cursed – with an accelerated nervous system. An orphan from the streets of
Brazil, he acts as a freelance spy, happy to use his strange talents in the service
of dubious organizations and governments – until, in Kazakhstan, on a personal
mission to rescue a former lover, he is sucked into a deadly maelstrom of
betrayal that forces him to question all notions of friendship and allegiance.

Relevant to our times, PERFORMANCE ANOMALIES explores the expansion of
Beijing’s imperial reach into Central Asia, and the takeover of Kazakhstan.
Cono’s main adversary is a brutal Beijing agent whose personality has been
twisted by the Cultural Revolution’s devastation of his family. Victor Robert Lee’s
topical depiction of a Beijing government pursuing territorial expansion
resonates with current tensions over China’s claims on the entire South China
Sea.

KUWAIT

THE PACT WE MADE by LAYLA ALAMMAR: The Pact We Made tells the
story of Dahlia who is staring down the barrel of her thirtieth birthday, the age
when a Kuwaiti woman from a good family is past
her prime marrying years.

Dahlia straddles two worlds: one in which she’s a modern woman living in a
modern city, and another where she can’t have male friends, or leave the
country without her father’s consent.

With shades of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and woven through with
reflections on Ariel’s story from The Tempest, The Pact We Made explores
ideas of freedom and the duality of being a woman in Kuwait.

MAMA HISSA’S MICE by SAUD ALSANOUSI: Growing up together in the
Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic
origin nor religious denomination—only friendship and a rage against the
unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay
bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuada’s Kids. Their righteous
transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shi’a extremists.
They’ve also elicited the concern of Fahd’s grandmother, Mama Hissa, a
story-spinning font of piety, wisdom, superstition, and dire warnings, who
cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall.

Then one day, after an attack on his neighborhood leaves him injured, Katkout
regains consciousness. His friends are nowhere to be found. Inundated with
memories of his past, Katkout begins a search for them in a world that has
become unrecognizable but not forsaken.

SALT HOUSES by HALA ALYAN: Where do you go when you can’t go
home?

On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in
a cup of coffee dregs.

Although she keeps her predictions to herself that day, they soon come to pass
in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Caught up in the resistance, Alia’s
brother disappears, while Alia and her husband move from Nablus to Kuwait
City. Reluctantly they build a life, torn between needing to remember and
learning to forget.

When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, Alia and her family yet again lose their
home, their land, and their story as they know it. Scattering to Beirut, Paris and
Boston, Alia’s children begin families of their own, once more navigating the
burdens and blessings of beginning again.

LEBANON

I REMEMBER BEIRUT by ZEINA ABIRACHED: Zeina Abirached, author of
the award-winning graphic novel A Game for Swallows, returns with a
powerful collection of wartime memories.

Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting
between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. Follow her past cars
riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go,
and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk.

With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary
life inside a war zone.

THE HAKAWATI by RABIH ALAMEDDINE: In 2003, Osama al-Kharrat
returns to Beirut after many years in America to stand vigil at his father’s
deathbed. The city is a shell of the Beirut Osama remembers, but he and his
friends and family take solace in the things that have always sustained them:
gossip, laughter, and, above all, stories.

Osama’s grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching
stories—of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how
he earned the name al-Kharrat, the fibster—are interwoven with classic tales
of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined. Here are Abraham and Isaac;
Ishmael, father of the Arab tribes; the ancient, fabled Fatima; and Baybars,
the slave prince who vanquished the Crusaders. Here, too, are contemporary
Lebanese whose stories tell a larger, heart-breaking tale of seemingly
endless war—and of survival.

BEIRUT HELLFIRE SOCIETY by RAWI HAGE: Beirut Hellfire Socie-
ty follows Pavlov, the twenty-something son of an undertaker, who, after his
father's death, is approached by a member of the mysterious Hellfire Society
--an anti-religious sect that, among their many rebellious and often salacious
activities, arrange secret burial for those who have been denied it because
the deceased was homosexual, atheist, or otherwise outcast and abandoned
by their family, church, and state. Pavlov agrees to take up his father's work
for the Society, and over the course of the novel acts as survivor-chronicler
of his torn and fading community, bearing witness to both its enduring rituals
and its inevitable decline.

Combining comedy and tragedy, Beirut Hellfire Society is a brilliant, urgent
meditation on what it is to live through war. It asks what, if anything, can be
accomplished or preserved in the face of certain change and certain death.

MALAYSIA

THE WOMAN WHO BREATHED TWO WORLDS by SELINA SIAK CHIN
YOKE: Facing challenges in an increasingly colonial world, Chye Hoon, a
rebellious young girl, must learn to embrace her mixed Malayan-Chinese identity
as a Nyonya—and her destiny as a cook, rather than following her first dream of
attending school like her brother.

Amidst the smells of chillies and garlic frying, Chye Hoon begins to appreciate the
richness of her traditions, eventually marrying Wong Peng Choon, a Chinese
man. Together, they have ten children. At last, she can pass on the stories she
has heard—magical tales of men from the sea—and her warrior’s courage, along
with her wonderful kueh (cakes).

But the cultural shift towards the West has begun. Chye Hoon finds herself afraid
of losing the heritage she so prizes as her children move more and more into the
modernising Western world.

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS by TAN TWAN ENG: Malaya, 1951. Yun
Ling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks
solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands. There
she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and
creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of the emperor of Japan.
Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create
a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but
agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.” Then
she can design a garden for herself.

As the months pass, Yun Ling finds herself intimately drawn to the gardener and
his art, while all around them a communist guerilla war rages. But the Garden of
Evening Mists remains a place of mystery. Who is Aritomo and how did he come
to leave Japan? And is the real story of how Yun Ling managed to survive the
war perhaps the darkest secret of all?

A MOST PECULIAR MALAYSIAN MURDER by SHAMINI FLINT: Inspector
Singh is in a bad mood. He's been sent from his home in Singapore to Kuala
Lumpur to solve a murder that has him stumped. Chelsea Liew - the famous
Singaporean model - is on death row for the murder of her ex-husband. She
swears she didn't do it, he thinks she didn't do it, but no matter how hard he
tries to get to the bottom of things, he still arrives back at the same place -
that Chelsea's husband was shot at point blank range, and that Chelsea had
the best motivation to pull the trigger: he was taking her kids away from her.

Now Inspector Singh must pull out all the stops to crack a crime that could
potentially free a beautiful and innocent woman and reunite a mother with
her children. There's just one problem - the Malaysian police refuse to play
ball...

MYANMAR

MISS BURMA by CHARMAINE CRAIG: After attending school in Calcutta,

Benny settles in Rangoon, then part of the British Empire, and falls in love with Khin,
a woman who is part of a long-persecuted ethnic minority group, the Karen. World
War II comes to Southeast Asia, and Benny and Khin must go into hiding in the
eastern part of the country during the Japanese Occupation, beginning a journey that
will lead them to change the country's history.

After the war, the British authorities make a deal with the Burman nationalists, led by
Aung San, whose party gains control of the country. When Aung San is assassinated,
his successor ignores the pleas for self-government of the Karen people and other
ethnic groups, and in doing so sets off what will become the longest-running civil war
in recorded history. Benny and Khin's eldest child, Louisa, has a danger-filled,
tempestuous childhood and reaches prominence as Burma's first beauty queen soon
before the country falls to dictatorship. As Louisa navigates her newfound fame, she
is forced to reckon with her family's past, the West's ongoing covert dealings in her
country and her own loyalty to the cause of the Karen people.

THE GOLDEN PARASOL by WENDY LAW-YONE: A year after Burma’s mili-
tary coup in 1962, Ed Law-Yone, daredevil proprietor of the influential newspa-
per, The Nation, was arrested and his newspaper shut down. Eventually, his
teenaged daughter Wendy was also imprisoned before managing to escape the
country.

Ed spent five years as a political prisoner, but the moment he was freed he set
about trying – unsuccessfully – to stage a revolution, and never gave up hope for
the restoration of democracy in Burma. Exiled in America, he died disappointed –
though not before entrusting to his daughter Wendy his papers and unpublished
memoirs: of a career that had spanned the full sweep of modern Burmese history
– from colonial rule to independence; from the era of parliamentary democracy to
the military coup that would usher in decades of totalitarian rule.

Now, some forty years later, as Burma enters another period of transition, Wendy
Law-Yone has honoured her father’s legacy by setting his remarkable career in a
larger, more personal, story.

BURMA CHRONICLES by GUY DELISLE: Guy Delisle's newest travelogue
revolves around a year spent in Burma (also known as Myanmar) with his
wife and son.

Burma is notorious for its use of concealment and isolation as social control:
where scissor-wielding censors monitor the papers, the de facto leader of
the opposition has been under decade-long house arrest, insurgent-
controlled regions are effectively cut off from the world, and rumour is the
most reliable source of current information.

An impressive and moving work of comics journalism from the author
of Pyongyang and Shenzen.

NORTH KOREA

THE AQUARIUMS OF PYONGYAN by KANG CHOL-HWAN: Amid escalating

nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight
grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and
sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education."

Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his
story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing
a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok
when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured
forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South
Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.

Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book
brings together unassailable first-hand experience, setting one young man's personal
suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses
perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

WITHOUT YOU, THERE IS NO US by SUKI KIM: It is 2011, and all
universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, except for the
all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. This is where Suki Kim
has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months she will eat three
meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under
the watchful eye of the regime.

Life at the university is lonely and claustrophobic. Her letters are read by censors
and she must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but also
from her colleagues, evangelical Christian missionaries, whose faith she does not
share.

As the weeks pass she discovers how easily her students lie, and how total is their
obedience to Kim Jong-il. She also, bravely, hints at the existence of a world
beyond their own: the internet, free travel, democracy, and other ideas forbidden in
a country where torture and execution are commonplace. Yet her pupils are also full
of boyish enthusiasm, with flashes of curiosity not yet extinguished.

THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON by ADAM JOHNSON: Pak Jun Do is the
haunted son of a lost mother--a singer "stolen" to Pyongyang--and an influential
father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state
soon recognize the boy's loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself "a
humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world," Jun Do rises in the ranks. He
becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary
violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to
the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the
treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he
loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress "so pure, she didn't know what starving
people looked like."

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic
love, The Orphan Master's Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore
hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty
but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.

PAKISTAN

MOTH SMOKE by MOHSIN HAMID: When Daru Shezad is fired from his
banking job in Lahore, he begins a decline that plummets the length of this
sharply drawn, subversive tale. Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he
loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends
into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the
wife of his childhood friend and rival, Ozi—the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.

Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking
as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and
pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a
murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors
that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player
even as corruption drains its political will.

THE DIARY OF A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY by MONI MOHSIN: 'Everyone
knows me. All of Lahore, all of Karachi, all of Isloo - oho, baba, Islamabad -
half of Dubai, half of London and all of Khan Market and all the nice, nice
bearers in Imperial Hotel also...No ball, no party, no dinner, no coffee morning,
no funeral, no GT - Get-Together, baba - is complete without me.'
Meet Butterfly, Pakistan's most lovable, silly, socialite. An avid party goer, in-
spired mis speller, and unwittingly acute observer of Pakistani high society,
Butterfly is a woman like no other. In her world, SMS becomes S & M and
people eat 'three tiara cakes' while shunning 'do number ka maal'. 'What
cheeks!' as she would say. As her country faces tribulations - from 9/11 to the
assassination of Benazir Bhutto - Butterfly glides through her world, unfazed,
untouched, and stopped short only by the chip in her manicure.

A CASE OF EXPLODING MANGOES by MOHAMMED HANIF: Intrigue
and subterfuge combine with bad luck and good in this darkly comic debut
about love, betrayal, tyranny, family, and a conspiracy trying its damnedest
to happen.

Ali Shigri, Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of the Fury
Squadron, is on a mission to avenge his father's suspicious death, which the
government calls a suicide. Ali's target is none other than General Zia
ul-Haq, dictator of Pakistan. Enlisting a rag-tag group of conspirators,
including his cologne-bathed roommate, a hash-smoking American
lieutenant, and a mango-besotted crow, Ali sets his elaborate plan in motion.
There's only one problem: the line of would-be Zia assassins is longer than
he could have possibly known.

PALESTINE

JUSTICE FOR SOME by NOURA ERAKAT: Justice for Some offers a new
approach to understanding the Palestinian struggle for freedom, told through
the power and control of international law. Focusing on key junctures--from
the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to present-day wars in Gaza--Noura Erakat
shows how the strategic deployment of law has shaped current conditions.
Over the past century, the law has done more to advance Israel's interests
than the Palestinians'. But, Erakat argues, this outcome was never inevitable.

Law is politics, and its meaning and application depend on the political
intervention of states and people alike. Within the law, change is possible.
International law can serve the cause of freedom when it is mobilized in
support of a political movement. Presenting the promise and risk of
international law, Justice for Some calls for renewed action and attention to
the Question of Palestine.

PALESTINE by JOE SACCO: In late l991 and early 1992, at the time of the
first Intifada, Joe Sacco spent two months with the Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, travelling and taking notes. Upon returning to the United
States he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the
techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book
storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation. He captures
the heart of the Palestinian experience in image after unforgettable image,
with great insight and remarkable humour.

The nine-issue comics series won a l996 American Book Award. It is now
published for the first time in one volume, befitting its status as one of the
great classics of graphic non-fiction.

A SMALL DOOR SET IN CONCRETE by ILANA HAMMERMAN: After

losing her husband and her sister, Hammerman set out to travel to the end of the
world. She began her trip with the hope that it would reveal the right path to take
in life. But she soon realized that finding answers was less important than
experiencing the freedom to move from place to place without restriction.
Hammerman returned to the West Bank with a renewed joie de vivre and a
resolution: she would become a regular visitor to the men, women, and children
who were on the other side of the wall, unable to move or act freely. She would
listen to their dreams and fight to bring some justice into their lives.

A Small Door Set in Concrete is a moving picture of lives filled with destruction
and frustration but also infusions of joy. Whether joining Palestinian laborers lining
up behind checkpoints hours before the crack of dawn in the hope of crossing into
Israel for a day’s work, accompanying a family to military court for their loved
one’s hearing, or smuggling Palestinian children across borders for a day at the
beach, Hammerman fearlessly ventures into territories where few Israelis dare set
foot and challenges her readers not to avert their eyes in the face of injustice.

THE PHILIPPINES

ILUSTRADO by MIGUEL SYJUCO: It begins with a body. On a clear day in
winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River—
taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature. Gone, too, is
the only manuscript of his final book, a work meant to rescue him from obscurity
by exposing the crimes of the Filipino ruling families. Miguel, his student and only
remaining friend, sets out for Manila to investigate.

To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador’s story
through his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich
and dramatic family saga of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine
history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves.
Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much
as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society
caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

MONSOON MANSION by CINELLE BARNES: Cinelle Barnes was barely
three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately
ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother’s opulent social
aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father’s self-made
success, it was a girl’s storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father
leaves, and her mother’s terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle’s fantastical
childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined. Formerly a home
worthy of magazines and lavish parties, Mansion Royale becomes a dangerous
shell of the splendid palace it had once been.

In this remarkable ode to survival, Cinelle creates something magical out of her
truth—underscored by her complicated relationship with her mother. Through a
tangle of tragedy and betrayal emerges a revelatory journey of perseverance and
strength, of grit and beauty, and of coming to terms with the price of family—and
what it takes to grow up.

IN THE COUNTRY: STORIES by MIA ALVAR: These nine globe-trotting,
unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent,
vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are
exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the
Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and
elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again.

A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in
Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In
Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise,
that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her
brother, a labourer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions,
without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title
story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the
political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s.

SINGAPORE

MINISTRY OF MORAL PANIC by AMANDA LEE KOE: Meet an over-the-hill
Pop Yé-yé singer with a faulty heart, two conservative middle-aged women
holding hands in the Galápagos, and the proprietor of a Laundromat with a
penchant for Cantonese songs of heartbreak. Rehash national icons: the truth
about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh living out her days as a
chambermaid in Lake Tahoe, a mirage of the Merlion as a ladyboy working
Orchard Towers, and a high-stakes fantasy starring the still-suave lead of the
1990s TV hit serial The Unbeatables.

Heartfelt and sexy, the stories of Amanda Lee Koe encompass a skewed
world fraught with prestige anxiety, moral relativism, sexual frankness, and
the improbable necessity of human connection. Told in strikingly original
prose, these are fictions that plough, relentlessly, the possibilities of
understanding Singapore and her denizens discursively, off-centre.

PONTI by SHARLENE TEO: 2003, Singapore. Friendless and fatherless,
sixteen-year-old Szu lives in the shadow of her mother Amisa, once a
beautiful actress and now a hack medium performing séances with her sister
in a rusty house. When Szu meets the privileged, acid-tongued Circe, an
unlikely encounter develops into an intense friendship and offers Szu a means
of escape from her mother's alarming solitariness.

Seventeen years later, Circe is struggling through a divorce in fraught and
ever-changing Singapore when a project comes up at work: a remake of the
cult seventies horror film series 'Ponti', the very project that defined Amisa's
short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of
the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a past that threatens her
conscience.

AUNTY LEE’S DELIGHTS: A SINGAPOREAN MYSTERY by OVIDIA
YU: After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could have become one of
Singapore's "tai tai," an idle rich lady. Instead she is building a culinary
empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy
Singaporean meals are graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But
when a body is found in one of Singapore's tourist havens and one of her
guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two events
are likely connected.

The murder and disappearance throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked
stepson, Mark, his social-climbing wife, Selina, a gay couple whose love is
still illegal in Singapore, and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose
visit may mask a deeper purpose. Investigating the murder are Police
Commissioner Raja and Senior Staff Sergeant Salim, who quickly discover
that Aunty Lee's sharp nose for intrigue can sniff out clues that elude law
enforcers.

SOUTH KOREA

PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOM by KYUNG-SOOK SHIN: A million-plus-copy
best seller in Korea—a magnificent English-language debut poised to become
an international sensation—this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a
family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the
crowds of the Seoul Station
subway.

Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son,
husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture
of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.

You will never think of your mother the same way again after you read this
book.

HUMAN ACTS by HAN KANG: In the midst of a violent student uprising in
South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected
chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial,
and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho's best friend who
meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a
prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and
to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heart-
break and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless,
pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today,
by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraor-
dinary poetry of humanity.

WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM by MARY LYNN BRACHT: Korea, 1943.
Hana has lived her entire life under Japanese occupation. As a haenyeo, a
female diver of the sea, she enjoys an independence that few other Koreans
can still claim. Until the day Hana saves her younger sister from a Japanese
soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is
forced to become a comfort woman in a Japanese military brothel.
But haenyeo are women of power and strength. She will find her way home.

South Korea, 2011. Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the
sacrifice her sister made, but she must confront the past to discover peace.
Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the
legacy of war to find
forgiveness?

Suspenseful, hopeful, and ultimately redemptive, White Chrysanthemum tells
a story of two sisters whose love for each other is strong enough to triumph
over the grim evils of war.

SRI LANKA

ISLAND OF A THOUSAND MIRRORS by NAYOMI MUNAWEERA: Before
violence tore apart the tapestry of Sri Lanka and turned its pristine beaches
red, there were two families; two young women, ripe for love with hopes for
the future; and a chance encounter that leads to the terrible heritage they
must reckon with for years to come.

One tragic moment that defines the fate of these women and their families will
haunt their choices for decades to come. In the end, love and longing promise
only an uneasy peace.

A sweeping saga with the intimacy of a memoir that brings to mind epic fiction
like The Kite Runner and The God of Small Things, Nayomi
Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors strikes mercilessly at the heart of
war. It offers an unparalleled portrait of a beautiful land during its most difficult
moments.

THIS DIVIDED ISLAND by SAMANTH SUBRAMANIAN: In the summer of
2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to a
bloody end the stubborn and complicated civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty
years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere: into the bustle of Colombo, the
Buddhist monasteries scattered across the island, the soft hills of central Sri
Lanka, the curves of the eastern coast near Batticaloa and Trincomalee, and the
stark, hot north. With its genius for brutality, the war left few places, and fewer
people, untouched.

What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict?
What happens to the country's soul? Samanth Subramanian gives us an
extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to
the ghosts of summers past, and to other battles from other times, he draws out
the story of Sri Lanka today - an exhausted, disturbed society, still hot from the
embers of the war.

WHAT LIES BETWEEN US by NAYOMI MUNAWEERA: Ganga, a young
girl, grows up carefree in the midst of her loving family in an old and beautiful
house nestled in the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka. Her childhood is like any
other—until it isn’t. A cherished friendship is revealed to have monstrous
undertones and the consequences of trauma spell out both the end of her
childhood and that of her stable home. Ostracized by their community in the
wake of one terrible night, Ganga and her mother seek safety by immigrating
to America.

In America Ganga must negotiate the challenges and thrills of an American
teenage girlhood. She navigates immigrancy and thrives. She fulfils the
American dream by graduating from college, moving to San Francisco and
working as a nurse, yet beneath the surface the scars of her past continue to
haunt her. When she meets Daniel, a handsome, charismatic man and falls
deeply in love, it appears that she has found her happily ever after. Instead,
the secrets continue to corrode he life until she finally commits one terrible
and unforgivable act.

SYRIA

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS by ZEYN JOUKHADAR: Nour has lost her
father. She has also lost the place she was born in and now lives in the Syrian
town of Homs, along with her sisters and mother. And so, by the fig tree in the
garden, Nour whispers the stories her Baba once told her, so that the roots of
the tree will carry those stories back to where her father is buried and he
won't feel so alone. Her favourite is the story of Rawiya, a young girl from the
twelfth century who left her home in search of adventure, dressed as a boy.

But Syria is changing and it isn't long before protests and shelling destroy the
peace of the quiet city. As Nour begins her own journey as a refugee, she
draws strength and inspiration from the voyage of Rawiya, who became
apprenticed to the famous mapmaker, Al Idrisi, and who battled mythical
creatures and endured epic battles in the attempt to compile the most
accurate map of the world ever made.

NO TURNING BACK: LIFE, LOSS, AND HOPE IN WARTIME SYRIA by
RANIA ABOUZEID: Award-winning journalist Rania Abouzeid dissects the
tangle of ideologies and allegiances that make up the Syrian conflict through the
dramatic stories of four young people seeking safety and freedom in a shattered
country. Hailed by critics, No Turning Back masterfully “[weaves] together the
lives of protestors, victims, and remorseless killers at the centre of this century’s
most appalling human tragedy” (Robert F. Worth).

Based on more than five years of fearless, clandestine reporting, No Turning
Back brings readers deep inside Bashar al-Assad’s prisons, to covert meetings
where foreign states and organizations manipulated the rebels, and to the highest
levels of Islamic militancy and the formation of the Islamic State. An utterly
engrossing human drama full of vivid, indelible characters, No Turning
Back shows how hope can flourish even amid one of the twenty-first century’s
greatest humanitarian disasters.

THE CROSSING by SAMAR YAZBEK:

Journalist Samar Yazbek was forced into exile by Assad's regime. When
the uprising in Syria turned to bloodshed, she was determined to take
action and secretly returned several times. The Crossing is her rare,
powerful and courageous testament to what she found inside the borders
of her homeland.

From the first peaceful protests for democracy to the arrival of ISIS, she
bears witness to those struggling to survive, to the humanity that can
flower amidst annihilation, and why so many are now desperate to flee.

TURKEY

10 MINUES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD by ELIF SHAFAK:
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to
ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells,
having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they
did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of
spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth
of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use
to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee
that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works.
Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her
life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .

LAST TRAIN TO ISTANBUL by AYSE KULIN: As the daughter of one of Tur-
key’s last Ottoman pashas, Selva could win the heart of any man in Ankara.
Yet the spirited young beauty only has eyes for Rafael Alfandari, the hand-
some Jewish son of an esteemed court physician. In defiance of their families,
they marry, fleeing to Paris to build a new life.

But when the Nazis invade France, the exiled lovers will learn that nothing—
not war, not politics, not even religion—can break the bonds of family. For af-
ter they learn that Selva is but one of their fellow citizens trapped in France, a
handful of brave Turkish diplomats hatch a plan to spirit the Alfandaris and
hundreds of innocents, many of whom are Jewish, to safety. Together, they
must traverse a war-torn continent, crossing enemy lines and risking every-
thing in a desperate bid for
freedom.

THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE by ORHAN PAMUK: Set in Istanbul

between 1975 and today - tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's
richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the
beautiful Füsun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. In his romantic pursuit of
Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of
objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress - a museum that is both a map of a
society and of his heart.

The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long,
obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis
experienced by Istanbul's upper classes that find themselves caught between
traditional and westernised ways of being. Orhan Pamuk's first novel since
winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring love story and exploration of the nature of
romance.

UZBEKISTAN

THE DEVIL’S DANCE by HAMID ISMAILOV: On New Years’ Eve 1938, the
writer Abdulla Qodiriy is taken from his home by the Soviet secret police and
thrown into a Tashkent prison. There, to distract himself from the physical and
psychological torment of beatings and mindless interrogations, he attempts to
mentally reconstruct the novel he was writing at the time of his arrest – based
on the tragic life of the Uzbek poet-queen Oyhon, married to three khans in
succession, and living as Abdulla now does, with the threat of execution
hanging over her.

As he gets to know his cellmates, Abdulla discovers that the Great Game of
Oyhon’s time, when English and Russian spies infiltrated the courts of Central
Asia, has echoes in the 1930s present, but as his identification with his
protagonist increases and past and present overlap it seems that Abdulla’s
inability to tell fact from fiction will be his undoing.

A CARPET RIDE TO KHIVA by CHRISTOPHER ASLAN ALEXANDER: The
Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers
simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly
writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering
madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva - a remote
desert oasis in Uzbekistan - immensely alluring, and stayed.

Immersing himself in the language and rich cultural traditions Alexander
discovers a world torn between Marx and Mohammed - a place where veils
and vodka, pork and polygamy freely mingle - against a backdrop of forgotten
carpet designs, crumbling but magnificent Islamic architecture and scenes
drawn straight from "The Arabian Nights". Accompanied by a large green
parrot, a ginger cat and his adoptive Uzbek family, Alexander recounts his
efforts to rediscover the lost art of traditional weaving and dyeing, and the
process establishing a self-sufficient carpet workshop, employing local women
and disabled people to train as apprentices.

THE RAILWAY by HAMID ISMAILOV: Set mainly in Uzbekistan between
1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town
of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are
Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a
Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-
Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colorful lives offer a unique and comic
picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming
Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans,
Tatars, and Gypsies.

At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station—a
source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond
the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway is full of colour. Sophisticated yet
with a naive delight in storytelling, it chronicles the dramatic changes felt
throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.

YEMEN

A LAND WITHOUT JASMINE by WAJDI AL-AHDAL: A Land Without
Jasmine is a sexy, satirical detective story about the sudden
disappearance of a young female student from Yemen 's Sanaa
University. Each chapter is narrated by a different character, beginning
with Jasmine herself. The mystery surrounding her disappearance
comes into clearer focus with each self-serving and idiosyncratic
account provided by an acquaintance, family member, or detective.
The hallucinatory ending, although appropriately foreshadowed, may
come as a Sufi surprise for the reader. Less mystically inclined readers
may want to reread this tale to construct an alternative ending. Wajdi al
-Ahdal is a satirical author with a fresh and provocative voice and an
excellent eye for the telling details of his world.

THE MONK OF MOKHA by DAVE EGGERS: The Monk of Mokha is
the exhilarating true story of a young Yemeni American man,
raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient
art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana’a by civil
war.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he
discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen’s central place in
it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral
homeland to tour terraced farms high in the country’s rugged mountains
and meet beleaguered but determined farmers. But when war engulfs
the country and Saudi bombs rain down, Mokhtar has to find a way out
of Yemen without sacrificing his dreams or abandoning his people.

SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN by PAUL TORDAY: What
does it take to make us believe in the impossible?

For Dr. Alfred Jones, life is a quiet mixture of civil service at the
National Centre for Fisheries Excellence and marriage to Mary—an
ambitious, no-nonsense financier. But a strange turn of fate from an
unexpected direction forces Jones to upend his existence and spend
all of his time in pursuit of another man’s ludicrous dream. Can there
be salmon in the Yemen? Science says no. But if resources are
limitless and the visionary is inspired, maybe salmon fishing in the
Yemen isn’t impossible. Then again, maybe nothing is.



BELARUS

GINGERBREAD by ROBERT DINSDALE: In Belarus, a land of endless
ancient forests, an orphaned boy must scatter his mother’s ashes. His mama
has exacted a solemn promise: to stay beside and protect grandfather,
whatever happens.

On their journey into the woodland, hunks of mama’s delicious gingerbread
sustain the young boy as grandfather’s magical tales push the harsh world
away. But the driving snow masks a frozen history of long-buried secrets. And
as man and child forage further, grandfather’s tales turn to terrible truths of
times past.

Fairy-tale and history interweave in this magical, haunting tale of the lengths a
boy must go to, in order to survive.

THE BIELSKI BROTHERS by PETER DUFFY: In 1941, three brothers wit-
nessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual
murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly
throughout the war. Instead of running or giving in to despair, these brothers --
Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- fought back, waging a guerrilla war of wits
against the Nazis.

By using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the
Belarusian towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and
established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join
their ranks. As more and more Jews arrived each day, a robust community
began to emerge, a Jerusalem in the woods.

After two and a half years in the woods, in July 1944, the Bielskis learned that
the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin.
More than one thousand Bielski Jews emerged -- alive -- on that final,
triumphant exit from the woods.

THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF IVAN ISAENKO by SCOTT STAMBACH:
Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr
Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. Born deformed yet mentally
keen with a frighteningly sharp wit, strong intellect, and a voracious
appetite for books, Ivan is forced to interact with the world through the
vivid prism of his mind. For the most part, every day is exactly the same
for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating
people and events around him for his own amusement.

That is, until a new resident named Polina arrives at the hospital. At first
Ivan resents Polina. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The
nurses like her. She is exquisite. But soon he cannot help being drawn to
her and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and
everything they never dared dream of. Before, he survived by being utterly
detached from things and people. Now Ivan wants something more: Ivan
wants Polina to live.

BOSNIA

THE BOOK OF MY LIVES by ALEKSANDAR HEMON: Aleksandar Hemon's

lives begin in Sarajevo, a small, blissful city where a young boy's life is consumed
with street soccer with the neighbourhood kids, resentment of his younger sister, and
trips abroad with his engineer-cum-beekeeper father. Here, a young man's life is
about poking at the pretensions of the city's elders with American music, bad poetry,
and slightly better journalism. And then, his life in Chicago: watching from afar as war
breaks out in Sarajevo and the city comes under siege, no way to return home; his
parents and sister fleeing Sarajevo with the family dog, leaving behind all else they
had ever known; and Hemon himself starting a new life, his own family, in this new
city.

And yet this is not really a memoir. The Book of My Lives, Hemon's first book of
nonfiction, defies convention and expectation. It is a love song to two different cities; it
is a heart-breaking paean to the bonds of family; it is a stirring exhortation to go out
and play soccer—and not for the exercise. It is a book driven by passions but built on
fierce intelligence, devastating experience, and sharp insight.

THE FIXER by JOE SACCO: When bombs are falling and western journalism is

the only game left in town "fixers" are the people who sell war correspondents the
human tragedy and moral outrage that makes news editors happy.

It's dangerous, a little amoral and a lot desperate.

Award-winning comix-journalist Joe Sacco goes behind the scene of war
correspondence to reveal the anatomy of the big scoop. He begins by returning us
to the dying days of Balkan conflict and introduces us to his own fixer; a man looking
to squeeze the last bit of profit from Bosnia before the reconstruction begins. Thanks
to a complex relationship with the fixer Joe discovers the crimes of opportunistic
warlords and gangsters who run the countryside in times of war. But the west is
interested in a different spin on the stories coming out of Bosnia. Almost ten years
later, Joe meets up with his fixer and sees how the new Bosnian government has
"dealt" with these criminals and Joe ponders who is holding the reins of power these
days...

WE ARE ALL THAT’S LEFT by CARRIE ARCOS: Zara and her mother,
Nadja, have a strained relationship. Nadja just doesn't understand Zara's
creative passion for, and self-expression through, photography. And Zara
doesn't know how to reach beyond their differences and connect to a
closed-off mother who refuses to speak about her past in Bosnia. But
when a bomb explodes as they're shopping in their local farmers' market in
Rhode Island, Zara is left with PTSD--and her mother is left in a coma.
Without the opportunity to get to know her mother, Zara is left with
questions--not just about her mother, but about faith, religion, history, and
her own path forward.

As Zara tries to sort through her confusion, she meets Joseph, whose
grandmother is also in the hospital, and whose exploration of religion and
philosophy offer comfort and insight into Zara's own line of thinking.

CROATIA

DARK MOTHER EARTH by KRISTIAN NOVAK: As a novelist, Matija makes
things up for a living. Not yet thirty, he’s written two well-received books. It’s
his third that is as big a failure as his private life. Unable to confine his
fabrications to fiction, he’s been abandoned by his girlfriend over his lies. But
all Matija has is invention. Especially when it comes to his childhood and the
death of his father. Whatever happened to Matija as a young boy, he can’t
remember. He feels frightened, angry, and responsible…

Now, after years of burying and reinventing his past, Matija must confront it.
Longing for connection, he might even win back the love of his life. But
discovering the profound fears he has suppressed has its risks. Finally seeing
the real world he emerged from could upend it all over again.

1941 by SLAVKO GOLDSTEIN: On April 10, when the German troops
marched into Zagreb, the Croatian capital, they were greeted as liberators by
the Croats. Three days later, Ante Pavelić, the future leader of the Independent
State of Croatia, returned from exile in Italy and Goldstein’s father, the proprietor
of a leftist bookstore in Karlovac—a beautiful old city fifty miles from the
capital—was arrested along with other local Serbs, communists, and Yugoslav
sympathizers. Goldstein was only thirteen years old, and he would never see his
father again.

More than fifty years later, Goldstein seeks to piece together the facts of his
father’s last days. The moving narrative threads stories of family, friends, and
other ordinary people who lived through those dark times together with personal
memories and an impressive depth of carefully researched historic details. The
other central figure in Goldstein’s heartrending tale is his mother—a strong,
resourceful woman who understands how to act decisively in a time of terror in
order to keep her family alive.

THE HIRED MAN by AMINATTA FORNA: Gost is surrounded by
mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian
winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old
house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the
windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively
chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her
teenage children have arrived.

A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his
two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they
uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of
summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long
past still suppurate beneath the scars.

CZECH REPUBLIC

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING by MILAN KUNDERA: A
young woman is in love with a successful surgeon - a man torn between his
love for her and his incorrigible womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited
artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals - while her other lover stands to
lose everything because of his noble qualities.
In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous
events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its
substance and weight - and we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being'.
A masterpiece by one of the world's truly great writers, Milan Kundera's The
Unbearable Lightness of Being encompasses passion and philosophy,
infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and
private desires, comedy and tragedy - and illuminates all aspects of human
existence.

MELMOTH by SARAH PERRY: It has been years since Helen Franklin left
England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of
sorts—or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a
mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning
that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy
tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels
through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation
of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of
unenlightened fantasy.

But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being
watched. And then Karel disappears. . . .

THE LAST PALACE by NORMAN EISEN: When Norman Eisen moved into
the US ambassador's residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother
had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden
beneath the furniture.

From that discovery unspooled the captivating, twisting tale of the
remarkable people who lived in the house before Eisen. Their story is
Europe's, telling the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the endurance
of liberal democracy: the optimistic Jewish financial baron who built the
palace; the conflicted Nazi general who put his life at risk for the house
during World War II; the first post-war US ambassador struggling to save
both the palace and Prague from communist hands; the child star- turned-
diplomat who fought to end totalitarianism; and Eisen's own mother, whose
life demonstrates how those without power and privilege moved through
history.