Afsana Press – förlag

Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen. So begins The Last Pomegranate Tree, a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's rule and Iraq's Kurdish conflict. An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, the book interrogates the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other's lives as war mutilated the region.

Max Marwell is caught between running his global art business and dealing with his own past and that of the Jewish people. Born and raised in Linz, Austria, the hometown of Hitler and Eichmann, he is obsessed with avenging the deaths of his parents and the restitution of art looted by the Nazis. Masterpieces are traced, bought, and transported to Casablanca and Marrakesh, as Max is pursued through North Africa and France. His adventures entangle him with a murder case, hunted by French police and Interpol. The novel offers a peek into the art world and the way it sometimes overlaps with less salubrious circles.Set in Morocco and Britain at the end of 1969, the novel examines how people who are inclusive and forward-looking thrive at these moments of change. At the time, Marrakesh was a meeting point for visionaries like Yves Saint Laurent and romantics looking for a continuation of the summer of love. Internationally renowned art dealer Max Marwell wishes for his son to take over his Mayfair art gallery, but the younger Marwell is an addict. Max is shipping art but also pure heroin within the crated masterpieces; this is so his son does not die from a bad dose. As the world winds into the 1970s, and as Max finds new love and breaks away from vengeance, the world of the Marwells changes drastically

They called it Badam Bagh – the Almond Garden. But inside Kabul's central women's prison, nothing bloomed. Nothing except rage. When Niloofar, a teenage inmate, sets herself on fire, the authorities call it a suicide attempt. But two women - Sultan, a feared inmate who once killed her abusive husband, and Setara, a teacher and gifted artist imprisoned for a crime she did not commit - begin to suspect that the fire was not just a tragedy, but a protest. As they uncover a web of abuse and corruption, they draw in fellow inmates Sheyda and Geisha along the way. Together, they risk everything to expose a sinister secret that stretches far beyond the prison walls.In a land where fire once symbolised truth and divine power, their silence becomes the flame that sets the system ablaze. Set against a brutal system built to erase them, The Almond Garden of Kabul is a haunting story of resistance, remembrance, and the fire women carry within them.

In London, Jerry Gold's mother calls with an impossible demand: travel to Romania and into Ukraine to save a wooden house her father built before the second world war. The house had been a refuge for the family before they were deported in 1941 to Transnistria, a part of the holocaust. Armed only with his mother's blurred 1980s photographs, a befriended truck driver and museum director and an uncanny sense that the land remembers him, Jerry is pushed through northern Romania's forests and borderlands toward Chernivtsi in Ukraine and the truth about the house. Using Romanian new wave cinema, the art of Brancusi, Romanian traditions and the richness of the landscape, BIRD IN SPACE blends history with the present day, depicting a country that is lost in time, still emerging from Communism and struggling with its past and future. The story is personal, one of searching and belonging and asks questions about middle-age, the impact of war and what we do with our personal and built heritage.

This is the fictionalized story of a genocide as told by some who lived it - as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses. The story is based on the author's testimonial and documentary research for Human Rights Watch in northern Iraq in 1992-1994 and thereafter. He has remained in regular contact with the two survivors and their families to this day. In particular, it's the story of two young men who were dragged to Saddam Hussein's killing grounds and, separately, managed to escape. Eventually they found their way to America - to live the protected but split-soul lives typical of first-generation immigrants. It's a story of luck, pluck, and perseverance, and many setbacks along the way.

In this anthology, ten women poets from Iran and Afghanistan share their ideas, emotions, desires and worldviews with lovers of poetry, in celebration of life and freedom. The book is an ode to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, and in memory of Jina Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish young woman who was brutally murdered by the Iranian regime's 'morality police' in September 2022. Featuring poems by: Azita Ghahraman; Ava Homa; Ziba Karbassi; Soheila Mirzaei; Sana Nassari; Nasrin Parvaz; Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah); Shirin Razavian; Muzhgan Saghar Schaffa; and Rouhi Shafii. With an introduction about the events and the role of literature in resistance movements by Shahrzad Mojab, professor of Women and Gender Studies at University of Toronto.

In the wake of a political scandal that shatters her high-flying career, journalist Dolly Fontaine seeks refuge at her childhood home, Genevrier, where her mysterious mother, celebrated seventies film star, Gloria Fontaine, lived for decades. When Dolly discovers a dusty box of cassette tapes in the attic revealing Gloria's most compelling, real-life role-a daring undercover mission as a British spy to her birth country of Lusenka-so begins a perilous journey involving diamonds, Cold War intrigue, and a merciless dictator. Can Gloria's voice recordings, and an enigmatic, retired spook once known as Sunstar, help Dolly uncover the truth before a deadly adversary silences her forever? Oh, Sugar spans two generations, taking the reader from 21st-century Cornwall to a fictional West African dictatorship at the height of the 1970s oil crisis.

At the age of ten Merywan Rashaba's life is shattered when the local Mullah declares him a neuter, neither a boy nor a girl, and therefore a doomed child. Merywan is terrified. If his father gets to know about his gender ambiguity, he will put a knife to his throat. Growing up as a Kurd in Saddam's Iraq, he feels he doesn't belong to this twisted society, but finds inspiration and comfort in the magic world of cinema. He secretly writes letters to his hero, Clint Eastwood, whom he calls Gringo, begging him to help him escape to America. As his plans are disrupted, Merywan is drawn deeper into a dark roller-coaster ride of savagery, passion, betrayal and heroism, which makes the movies he adores almost seem trivial by comparison.

This speculative thriller deals with the changes that took place after the 1991 uprising in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, in which a new generation was forced to watch their society transform without a voice. Like the Tree-Man, they were condemned to silence.

The story of a teenage refugee who must re-live the pain of his past to enter a land waiting behind a glass wall. Will his story be convincing enough to guarantee his safety?A story of struggle and persecution, yet abundant in hope, THE GLASS WALL is a clear-eyed, emotionally honest account of displaced people - illustrating the true hardships experienced by refugees.

Death, anxiety, masculinity, family and children, social good and rocks. The life of a middle-aged man going in search of a rock with his child in Ireland, travels to Istanbul with his wife while sleep-deprived, recounts memories of working and growing up in Dublin and explores what it means to do good in society today.

Torn between two countries and various life stories, the siblings find themselves dealing with complex life choices, and the mystery of their sister's suicide twenty-two years ago.Whispering Walls is a story of love, relationships, affection, and hope, with a cautious view of the future.

Dakar, Senegal, 1987: On a rainy night after a wild party, the British ambassador's wife, Vivienne Hughes, is involved in a car crash. Her vehicle hits the motor-bike of a young Senegalese doc-tor, Aime Tunkara, killing him. Pleading diplomatic immunity, Vivienne and her husband flee to England.Three decades later, Aime's little sister, Lily Tunkara, now a high-flying lawyer in Dakar, finds a photograph that compels her to investigate what really happened that rainy night. As Lily faces in-creasing hostility from the local community, she turns to Vivienne Hughes, the only remaining wit-ness, but is either woman pre-pared for the truth to emerge?

A spiky father-son relationship is tested to its limits on their last holiday together.A nine-day winter break in Tenerife. Nothing is quite good enough. A son tries in vain to ask his ailing, elderly Irish Jewish father questions about their past before it's too late. The absurdity and hilarity of family holidays in the sun are brought to life in this sharp and fiercely honest novel that crosses borders, carrying the reader on a tide of childhood pain, a search for identity, and growth.