Burial rites – Hannah Kent

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard.

Good Reads

A thousand splendid suns – Khaled Hosseini

Mariam is a harami – a bastard – who wishes desperately to be acknowledged by her father.  When her mother dies in tragic circumstances, her father gives her to Rasheed, an old shoe-repairer living in Kabul. He treats her terribly, but where is she to go?  Enter Laila, a fourteen year old neighbour who is in love with Tariq: they had their first sexual encounter and he had to leave Kabul with his family.  Laila’s family is killed and she is taken in by Rasheed and Mariam and has no hesitation in accepting Rasheed’s offer of marriage when she discovers she’s pregnant and has news that Tariq has died.

Khaled Hosseini

Crazy rich Asians (movie)

The year the maps changed – Danielle Binks

‘I was eleven when everything started and twelve by the end. But that’s another way maps lie, because it felt like the distance travelled was a whole lot further than that.’

Sorrento, Victoria – 1999
Fred’s family is a mess. Fred’s mother died when she was six and she’s been raised by her Pop and adoptive father, Luca, ever since. But now Pop is at the Rye Rehabilitation Centre recovering from a fall; Luca’s girlfriend, Anika, has moved in; and Fred’s just found out that Anika and Luca are having a baby of their own. More and more it feels like a land-grab for family and Fred is the one being left off the map.

But even as the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, a crisis from the other side of it comes crashing in. When 400 Kosovar-Albanian refugees arrive in the middle of the night to be housed at one of Australia’s ‘safe havens’ on an isolated headland not far from Sorrento, their fate becomes intertwined with the lives of Fred and her family, as she navigates one extraordinary year that will change them all.

Good Reads

Whale rider (movie)

Boy overboard: The play

Adapted for the stage by Patricia Cornelius from Morris Gleitzman’s best-selling novel, Boy Overboard depicts a deeply human side of the ‘asylum seekers’ issue by following the journey of Jamal and Bibi from Afghanistan to Australia.
Their dream is to play soccer for Australia in the next World Cup. Before they reach Australia though, they must face landmines, pirates, storms and assassins.
Based on real life events, this is a moving play about young people overcoming the confusion of war, politics and the search for a safe haven.

The arrival – Shaun Tan

The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time.

A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages.

With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.

The killing sea – Richard Lewis

Ruslan slipped away from the cafe and the curious onlookers.

He began to run, not knowing exactly why, but instinct made him head away from the sea.

In the distance, along the seafront of Ujung Karang, screams rose from a hundred, a thousand mouths.

Sarah is on holiday sailing with her family when their boat is crushed by the tsunami.

She and her brother make it ashore but their mother is killed and their father is missing.

Ruslan has lived in Indonesia all his life, and can’t believe the destruction that the sea has caused.

Searching for his dad, Ruslan meets Sarah, and their lives are thrown together in the aftermath of the devastation.

kobobooks

Good Reads

The bone sparrow – Zana Fraillon

Subhi is a refugee. Born in an Australian permanent detention center after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, Subhi has only ever known life behind the fences. But his world is far bigger than that—every night, the magical Night Sea from his mother’s stories brings him gifts, the faraway whales sing to him, and the birds tell their stories. And as he grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of his containment.
The most vivid story of all, however, is the one that arrives one night in the form of Jimmie—a scruffy, impatient girl who appears on the other side of the wire fence and brings with her a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it herself, she relies on Subhi to unravel her family’s love songs and tragedies.
Subhi and Jimmie might both find comfort—and maybe even freedom—as their tales unfold. But not until each has been braver than ever before.

Good Reads

Parvana – Deborah Ellis

There are many types of battle in Afghanistan. Imagine living in a country where women and girls are not allowed to leave the house without a man. Imagine having to wear clothes that cover every part of your body, including your face. This is the life of Parvana, a young girl growing up in Afghanistan under the control of an extreme religious military group.

When soldiers burst into her home and drag her father off to prison, Parvana is forced to take responsibility for her whole family, dressing as a boy to make a living in the marketplace of Kabul, risking her life in the dangerous and volatile city.

latrobe.edu.au