Yasmina Khadra – författare

'Darling, this is Younes. Yesterday he was my nephew, today he is our son'.Younes' life is changed forever when his poverty-stricken parents surrender him to the care of his more affluent uncle. Re-named Jonas, he grows up in a colourful colonial Algerian town, and forges a unique friendship with a group of boys, an enduring bond that nothing - not even the Algerian Revolt - will shake. He meets Emilie - a beautiful, beguiling girl who captures the hearts of all who see her - and an epic love story is set in motion. Time and again Jonas is forced to to choose between two worlds: Algerian or European; past or present; love or loyalty, and finally decide if he will surrender to fate or take control of his own destiny at last.AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER.

Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen's dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq's wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably intertwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice. The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become routine.

"Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done badly; evil done well." And such is the twisted logic of good and bad, right and wrong, knitted into this novella by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from North Africa in our time. With his father brutally killed as a traitor during a national liberation war and his older brother an army officer far away, the young narrator lives reclusively with his mother, who scorns him. He turns to his young cousin for affection, only to be mocked and humiliated so deeply that his love becomes hopelessly entangled with hatred.  Fate places a young woman in the narrator's path when he rescues her from a violent attack, and the reawakening of his confused passions proceeds toward terrible vengeance. In this nameless narrator's tormented reflections, played out against the backdrop of an indifferent world, Yasmina Khadra plumbs the mysteries of the crippled heart's desires.

Sirte, Libyen det är natten mellan den 19 och 20 oktober 2011.  Libyens omstridde härskare Muammar Gaddafi har bara några timmar kvar att leva. Rebellerna finns överallt, han har allt svårare att gömma sig undan. Men i sina egna ögon är Gaddafi fortfarande Libyens självklare ledare han ser sig som något av en Messias.  Nästan alla i hans omgivning inser att slutet är nära för honom och hans regim. Själv minns han såväl triumfer som förödmjukelser: hur han revolterade, avsatte en kung, grundade en republik, blev landets oinskränkte härskare och en del av det internationella samfundet, hur han hånades som oäkting och fick veta att han inte var fin nog för att få gifta sig med den flicka han ville ha till hustru. Han minns också hur han, när han väl kommit till makten, njöt av att hämnas alla oförrätter. Medan han ser tillbaka på sin barndom och på sin karriär briserar granaterna allt närmare de ställen han gömmer sig. Den oro han börjar känna är fullständigt berättigad. Slutet är nära.  Yasmina Khadra har med Gaddafis sista natt skrivit en nordafrikansk diktatorsroman om en selfmade man som dyrkar sin skapare och som är dömd att gå under.