'An incredible book. Profoundly affecting and deeply soulful. This book will stay with me forever.' Ruth Jones, No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author I don't know how you've made it this far . . . Sami's childhood is much like any other - school with his friends, dinners with his family, playing with his pets (stray cats and dogs, and the turtle he keeps on the roof). But with Syria at war with itself, nothing is really normal. And Sami's hopes for a better future are about to be ripped away. Inspired by extraordinary true events, The Stray Cats of Homs is the breathtaking story of a young man who will do anything to keep the dream of home alive. ___ 'An absolutely riveting novel and a searing and incredibly important book. Storytelling at its best.' Donal Ryan 'Warm, captivating and inspiring.' Mike Thomson, author of Syria's Secret Library 'Compelling and uncompromising' BBC Radio 4, Sunday

Based on a true story — the thoughtful, raw, and ultimately heartening tale of a young man fighting for survival in a city under siege Growing up in Syria in the 1990s, Sami’s childhood was unremarkable. His day-to-day life largely sheltered him from the horrors of the authoritarian government, until he founded a successful internet company—which landed him on the regime’s radar. Suddenly Sami finds himself in jail, then forcibly enlisted into the Syrian army during the early days of a fast-growing civil uprising. Assigned to the mapmaking division, Sami yearns to simply serve his time and go home, even as he finds himself literally charting the course of the army’s response to the growing revolt. The situation that hits him full-force when he receives a text from his girlfriend: “They’re shooting at us.” With that, Sami realizes that it is not enough to endure Assad's regime -- he has to resist. He has to return home, to the city that will become known as the "capital of the revolution." Based on true events as told to journalist Eva Nour, City of Sparrows is the story of coming of age under siege and the power of hope in the face of unfathomable loss.

The novel tells the story of a young Syrian doctor whom the Ministry of Health sent from the capital Damascus to the city of Homs as part of his -post graduate education in late 2010. He witnessed how the city and the country went into full-scale civil war in 2011. The conflict between the regime, dominated by the Ba’ath Party under President Bashar El Assad and a fragmented but widely-supported, increasingly Islamist- dominated opposition has devastated the country and caused the deaths of over 150,000 persons, injuries of several hundred thousand and the displacement of almost half of Syria`s 23 million population during the three years of the conflict (2011-2013). Homs city is in central Syria, where one million Syrians used to live. It is the epicentre of this conflict and was the first major city to be contested and divided between the conflicting parties. The novel describes how over three years, the conflict totally changed the city, the hospital and the person himself.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.

A chubby, clean cat raised in a home meets a skinny stray cat, and a dialogue ensues between them, each trying to prove that it lives a happier life than the other. Who will prevail in the end? This story is specifically designed for young children to enhance their awareness and perspective on life from a younger age. It is a short yet engaging tale that will captivate kids’ minds.

Contesting Grand Narratives of the Intercultural uses an autoethnographic account of the author’s experience of living in Iran in the 1970s to demonstrate the constant struggle to prevent the intercultural from being dominated by essentialist grand narratives that falsely define us within separate, bounded national or civilisational cultures. This book provides critical insight that: DeCentres how we encounter and research the intercultural by means of a third-space methodology Recovers the figurative, creative, flowing, and boundary-dissolving power of culture Recognises hybrid integration which enables us the choice and agency to be ourselves with others in intercultural settings Demonstrates how early native-speakerism pulls us back to essentialist large-culture blocks. Aimed at students and researchers in applied linguistics, intercultural studies, sociology, and education, this volume shows how cultural difference in stories, personal space, language, practices, and values generates unexpected and transcendent threads of experience to which we can all relate within small culture formation on the go.

The uplifting true story of an extreme athlete, a stray dog, and how they found each other. “Heroic and heartwarming” (Forbes), this unbelievable adventure will make readers laugh, gasp, cry, and see rescue dogs with a whole new perspective. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MARK WAHLBERG—STREAMING ON STARZ When you're racing 435 miles through the jungles and mountains of South America, the last thing you need is a stray dog tagging along. But that's exactly what happened to Mikael Lindnord, captain of a Swedish adventure racing team, when he threw a scruffy but dignified mongrel a meatball one afternoon. When the team left the next day, the dog followed. Try as they might, they couldn't lose him—and soon Mikael realized that he didn't want to. Crossing rivers, battling illness and injury, and struggling through some of the toughest terrain on the planet, the team and the dog walked, kayaked, cycled, and climbed together toward the finish line, where Mikael decided he would save the dog, now named Arthur, and bring him back to his family in Sweden, whatever it took. Illustrated with candid photographs, Arthur provides a testament to the amazing bond between dogs and people.