Summer is over... "finally" some would say... (including myself :P ) and we're back to create, share, dream, write and read! Truth is, our world didn't get better since our last interaction. But I can still dream about a better tomorrow... no one can take that from me! But some dreams, hopefully (with my fingers crossed), can start to form themselves into reality (?). I'll share with you, something I've started during the summer, as a prologue for today's article.
I've always had a dream to create a Book Club in my city, Kavala, Greece. The last couple of years were extremely harsh and difficult for my life, so I've completely forgotten about that for a while. However this summer was revolutionary and enlightning for me. Thus, I decided to form this book club , taking it to another level. I had the idea to create a Book Club- Reading Society with the children in my local refugee camp. An apparent meeting-by-chance with an old friend helped me get in touch with the right people. I did what I had to do, in accordance to paperwork, applications etc and I did it!!! I formed a book club for the refugee children in Kavala's camp. Thing is, I was positively surprised by the acceptance and participation I received from those wonderful kids. Their eyes were shining of interest on my every word! All children and all people are the same ...! But these children, have been forgotten by the world. They need that extra something to get them motivated. The ideas are many and the whole project is taking it's form.
Once you start something, then all kinds of ideas start to pop in your head and get a shape, leading to other paths in a continuity of creation. My last idea was this article today. I felt the need to track down and write about the life and works of all refugees I could find. 2nd generation refugees to modern refugees, even writing from the camps. I'll try and do my best but I urge you to inform me of any refugee writer you might know or heard about. Thank you in advance!
Let's go see and meet some people :D
Leila Abdelrazaq -
She was born in 1992 in Chicago. She is a Palestinian author and artist. Her debut graphic novel, Baddawi (Just World Books 2015) was shortlisted for the 2015 Palestine Book Awards and has been translated into three languages. She is also the creator of a number of zines and short comics.
Leila’s creative work primarily explores issues related to diaspora, refugeehood, history, memory, and borders. She earned her MA in Modern Middle Eastern & North African Studies from the University of Michigan in 2020, where her research focused on Palestinian futurist art and and post-national imaginaries.
Leila is currently interested in exploring the intersections between abolitionist frameworks and no-state liberations. Which I guess is a fancy way of just saying that statehood won’t save us, and it’s time to think of other solutions.
Let's find out more about her book, the graphic novel "Baddawi"!
Baddawi is the story of a young boy named Ahmad struggling to find his place in the world. Raised in a refugee camp called Baddawi in northern Lebanon, Ahmad is just one of the many thousands of refugee children born to Palestinians who fled their homeland after the war in 1948 established the state of Israel.
In this visually arresting graphic novel, Leila Abdelrazaq explores her father’s childhood in the 1960s and ’70s from a boy’s eye view as he witnesses the world crumbling around him and attempts to carry on, forging his own path in the midst of terrible uncertainty.
Ahmad grows up in a crowded yet vibrant community amidst mounting unrest and violence in his host country, experiencing joys such as holidays and adventures with his friends, and facing heavy burdens, from a schoolyard bully to separation from his family during the Lebanese civil war. Ahmad’s dogged pursuit of education and opportunity echoes the journey of the Palestinian people, as they make the best of their present circumstances while remaining steadfast in their determination to one day return to their homeland.
Porochista Khakpour-
Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran and raised in the Greater Los Angeles area.
She has been awarded fellowships from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ucross Foundation, Djerassi, and Yaddo. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She is most recently the recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Prose).
Her debut novel Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove/Atlantic, 2007) was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Chicago Tribune “Fall’s Best,” and 2007 California Book Award winner. It also made the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing shortlist, the Dylan Thomas Prize long list, the Believer Book Award longlist, and many others.
Her second novel, The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014) was a Kirkus Best Book of 2014, a Buzzfeed Best Fiction Book of 2014, an NPR Best Book of 2014, one of Buzzfeed’s 28 Best Books By Women in 2014, an Electric Literature Best Book of 2014, a Volume1 Brooklyn Favorite Book of 2014, a PopMatters Best Book of 2014, one of Refinery29’s 2015 Books to Read in 2015, and one of Largehearted Boy’s 11 Favorite Novels of 2014. It was also one of Flavorwire’s 15 “Most Anticipated Books of 2014”, io9.com’s “Mind-Blowing Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Watch Out For in 2015”, The Millions “Most Anticipated” in their “The Great 2014 Book Preview”, Flavorwire’s “50 Excellent Fabulist Novels Everyone Should Read,”, and the Huffington Post’s “30 Books You NEED to Read in 2014.”
She regularly gives talks, lectures, and readings at festivals, universities, conventions, and conferences all over the country, from a keynote speech at the University of Cincinnati’s Rope Lecture Series to the PEN/Faulkner Reading Series (with Achy Obejas and Danzy Senna) to the Lannan Reading Series (in conversation with Karen Russell).
She has been a presenter at various book festivals all over the country, such as the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, the Texas Book Festival, and PEN World Voices. She has also presented at international book festivals such as the Perth and Adelaide Book Festivals in Australia (2015) and the Ubud Writers Festival in Bali (2015).
The last Illusion:
In an Iranian village, Zal's demented mother, horrified by the pallor of his skin and hair, is convinced she has given birth to a "white demon." She hides him in a birdcage for the next decade. Rescued by a behavioral analyst, Zal awakens in New York to the possibility of a future. A stunted and unfit adolescent, he strives to become human as he stumbles toward adulthood. As New York survives one potential disaster, Y2K, and begins hurtling toward another, 9/11, Zal finds himself in a cast of fellow outsiders. A friendship with a famous illusionist who claims—to the Bird Boy's delight—that he can fly and an affair with a disturbed artist who believes she is clairvoyant send Zal's life spiraling into chaos. Like the rest of New York, he is on a collision course with devastation.
Nihad Sirees-
Nihad Sirees was born in the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo (Halab) in 1950. He has a Masters in civil engineering and ran a private engineering office in Aleppo. His first novels were published in the 1980s and he gained a reputation as a realist in his writings which reflect the environment in Aleppo and the lives of the middle class, as well as political, historical and social issues.
He has written 7 novels and a number of plays, TV drama series and children’s dramas. His novel The North Winds, which deals with the First World War and the blossoming of Syrian national consciousness at that time, was described by critics as one of the most important historical novels in Syria.
The prolific Aleppo-born novelist Nihad Sirees left Syria in 2012 under personal and political pressure from the Syrian government, who viewed him as a threat. In this horrifyingly prescient, distinctly Orwellian novel, a Syrian writer is silenced for refusing to contribute to a system of propaganda in service to the unnamed dictator of an unnamed country—but he can’t be silenced entirely. The novel "The silence and the roar" is banned in Syria. It has been published in German and French and most recently was published in English in early 2013 by Pushkin Press in the UK and Other Press in the USA. It is also being translated into a number of other languages.
The Silence and the Roar follows a day in the life of Fathi Sheen, an author banned from publishing because he refuses to write propaganda for the ruling government. The entire populace has mobilized to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the reigning despot in this unnamed Middle eastern country. The heat is oppressive and loudspeakers blare as an endless parade takes over the streets. Desperate to get away from the noise and the zombie-like masses, Fathi leaves his house to visit his mother and his girlfriend, but en route stops to help a student who is being beaten by the police. Fathi’s iD papers are confiscated and he is told to report to the police station before night falls.
When Fathi turns himself in, he is led from one department to another in an ever-widening bureaucratic labyrinth. His only weapon against the irrationality of the government employees is his sense of irony. Tinged with a Kafkaesque sense of the absurd, The Silence and the Roar explores what it means to be truly free in mind and body.
Khaled Hosseini-
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. His father was a diplomat in the Afghan Foreign Ministry and his mother taught Farsi and history at a high school in Kabul. In 1976, the Foreign Ministry relocated the Hosseini family to Paris. They were ready to return to Kabul in 1980, but by then their homeland had witnessed a bloody communist coup and the invasion of the Soviet Army. The Hosseinis sought and were granted political asylum in the United States, and in September 1980 moved to San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from high school in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1988. The following year he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, where he earned a medical degree in 1993. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai medical center in Los Angeles and was a practicing internist between 1996 and 2004.
In March 2001, while practicing medicine, Hosseini began writing his first novel, The Kite Runner, which was published by Riverhead Books in 2003. That debut went on to launch one of the biggest literary careers of our time. Today, Khaled Hosseini is one of the most recognized and bestselling authors in the world. His books, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed, have been published in over seventy countries and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.
In 2006 Khaled was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Inspired by a trip he made to Afghanistan with the UNHCR, he later established The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two children.
A few words on "The kite runner" :
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.
I've decided to include less names on each article, in order to get easier for you to read and remember names and titles!
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