On a strategic hill overlooking the frontier, Iraqi and Iranian troops battle for access to a water tank. The troops are thirsty and on the brink of madness. They are, moreover, characters in a novel being written by an Iraqi journalist. That is, if he is given the chance to write it, a chance denied him by an Iraqi major who is in charge of a military prison and commands the journalist to write a fictitious report about a murder in the camp in hope of demoralising enemy soldiers.At...

The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif traces an Afghani refugee's extraordinary journey - from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan to his forcved exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban to incarceration in an Australian detention centre ... and finally to freedom.

Does one honor one’s country or one’s heart? Malka Marom explores this classic dilemma in her stunningly powerful first novel, an extraordinary tale of people caught up in a violent and seemingly endless historical conflict, compelled by love and grief to transcend it.Sulha tells the story of Leora, who, twenty years after her husband was killed in the Sinai War, is empowered by law to decide whether or not to allow her only son to serve high-risk duty as his father did. As Abraham...

The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and claimed dominion over the earth, dividing it into warring factions. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods' influence. There, he encounters the followers of a humanist leader known as the Lightbringer, who has vowed to rid mankind of the shackles of divine oppression. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is far more to this...

It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets. Private Investigator Makana, in exile from his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of the wife and daughter he lost, is shaken out of his grief when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl.Seeking answers, he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara desert, where ...

The Shah is thrown out of Iran and the nation's turmoil becomes world headlines.Caught in this shifting world of fanaticism, ambition, duplicity, heartbreak and violentdeath are the foreign helicopter pilots who have been servicing the oilfields up anddown the country. Their one objective now is to make a bold concerted escape, withtheir helicopters, to safety across the Gulf. But one of the pilots, Erikki, the blond Finnishpilot, is married to a beautifu...

*WINNER OF THE WRITERS' LEAGUE OF TEXAS FICTION AWARD 2017*It is the spring of 2003 and coalition forces are advancing on Iraq. Images of a giant statue of Saddam Hussein crashing to the ground in Baghdad are being beamed to news channels around the world. Nineteen-year-old Specialist Cassandra Wigheard, on her first deployment since joining the US army two years earlier, is primed for war.For Abu al-Hool, a jihadist since the days of the Soviet occupation ...

Imagine that a jewel-like garden overlooking Kabul is your ancestral home. Imagine a kitchen made fragrant with saffron strands and cardamom pods simmering in an authentic pilau. Now remember that you were born in London, your family in exile, and that you have never seen Afghanistan in peacetime.These are but the starting points of Saira Shah’s memoir, by turns inevitably exotic and unavoidably heartbreaking, in which she explores her family’s history in and out of Afghanistan. As...

This 1949 novella about the violent expulsion of Palestinian villagers by the Israeli army has long been considered a modern Hebrew masterpiece, and it has also given rise to fierce controversy over the years. Published just months after the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Khirbet Khizeh (the 'kh' pronounced like the 'ch' in 'Bach') was an immediate sensation when it first appeared. Thousands of Israeli Jews rushed to read it, the critics began to argue about it, and a Palestini...

A rich and greedy sultan meets his match in a VERY cheeky little red rooster…Hilariously wacky tale by bestselling author of War Horse.The rich and greedy sultan loves his jewels more than anything, so when he loses a diamond button he is furious!Especially as a naughty little red rooster seems determined to keep it…A marvellously funny tale by master storyteller, Michael Morpurgo.

Savushun chronicles the life of a Persian family during the Allied occupation of Iran during World War II. It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-Islamic monuments, the great poets, the shrines, Sufis, and nomadic tribes within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers; corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority; the paternalistic landowner-peasant relationship; tribalism; and the fear of famine. The story i...

In a war of lies, the truth can kill.Jonah Said is a loner and a troublemaker, shipped off by the British army to work with the UN in the buffer zone between Kuwait and Iraq, because they want him out of harm's way.Big mistake.From the minute he lands, Jonah becomes drawn into a deadly spiral of corruption and conspiracy involving Russians, Americans, Arabs and Brits - and none of them tells the truth.And the truth is more dangerous than even Jonah can imagi...