SOLD Travels of a Somali refugee

 

SOLD to a lawyer in East Sydney, NSW

Mint condition. PB. 256pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

An inspirational and uplifting memoir, this is the story of an optimistic man and his journey of struggle, hardship and survival against the odds.

Abdi's world fell apart when he was only thirteen and his home was destroyed in Somalia's vicious civil war. Effectively an orphan, he fled Mogadishu with 300 others and headed to Kenya. On the way, death squads hunted them and they daily faced violence, danger and starvation. After almost four months, they arrived in Kenya - of the three hundred that set out, only five had survived.

All alone in the world, Abdi made his way first back to Mogadishu, to search for his family, then onto Romania, where he lived for a time with gypsies, then to Germany. He was fifteen years old when he arrived in Melbourne. He had no English, family or friends. Homeless for the first year, he slept in churches and mosques. One lunchtime, he was bashed by three men in suits in Melbourne's CBD. Yet, against these odds, he survived. In fact, he's done more than just survive. Abdi went on to complete secondary education and attended university. He became a youth worker, was acknowledged with the 2007 Victorian Refugee Recognition Award and was featured in the SBS second series of Go Back to Where You Came From.

Despite what he has suffered, Abdi is the most extraordinary and inspiring man, who is constantly thankful for his life and what he has. Along his journey, Abdi met many, many other refugees. He knows quite a few who, faced with the same circumstances that he did, did not make it. Some died, some gave up, some committed suicide, and some became bitter. Abdi did not. Everything he has endured and achieved is testament to his quiet strength and courage, his resilience and most of all, his shining and enduring optimism.

SOLD A refugee travels from war-torn Yemen to America

 

SOLD to a lawyer in East Sydney

Mint condition. PB. 336pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

A gripping account of terror and escape." -- New York Times Book Review

The Fox Hunt tells one young man's unforgettable story of his harrowing escape from Yemen's brutal civil war with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith activists in the West.

WINNER: 2019 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARDS - A 2019 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS FINALIST

Born in the Old City of Sana'a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was twenty-three, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he'd previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen.

Then came the death threats: first on Facebook, then through terrifying anonymous phone calls. To protect himself and his family, Mohammed fled to the southern port city of Aden. He had no way of knowing that Aden was about to become the heart of a north-south civil war, and the battleground for a well-funded proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As gunfire and grenades exploded throughout the city, Mohammed hid in the bathroom of his apartment and desperately appealed to his contacts on Facebook.

Miraculously, a handful of people he barely knew responded. Over thirteen days, four ordinary young people with zero experience in diplomacy or military exfiltration worked across six technology platforms and ten time zones to save this innocent young man trapped between deadly forces-- rebel fighters from the north and Al Qaeda operatives from the south.

The story of an improbable escape as riveting as the best page-turning thrillers, The Fox Hunt reminds us that goodness and decency can triumph in the darkest circumstances.

An Australian refugee memoir

 

Mint condition. PB. 272pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In 1978, following a dramatic escape from war torn Vietnam, Tracy Vo's parents boarded a leaky boat not knowing what their future held or whether they would live. The couple had fled Vietnam under the cover of darkness, exchanged wedding rings en route to Malaysia, then sold them and their scant possessions to feed themselves and their 10 relatives on the journey. They were declared refugees.

Now, almost 40 years later, their decision to flee Vietnam has been rewarded by a happy and successful life for their family in Australia, the country they are now proud to call home. Here, their daughter Tracy reflects on that life changing journey and the amazing life it created for them in Australia. Today, Tracy is a successful Channel 9 journalist who has chosen to return to her family home to care for her family as they enter old age. Her story shows the extraordinary bravery of her parents and the many refugees like them who now call Australia home.

Seeking refuge in Australia from the Taliban

 

Mint condition. PB. 270pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

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 forced exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, to incarceration in an Australian detention centre ... and finally, to freedom.

Academy award winning film maker follows the trail of Australia's asylum seekers

 

Very good condition. PB. 239pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Angry and frustrated with Australia's asylum seeker and refugee policies, Eva Orner, Academy Award -winning filmmaker, returned home after a decade living in the States to make the documentary Chasing Asylum about the issue. Embarking on a tumultuous eighteen months, Eva travelled to Indonesia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran, spending time with and filming asylum seekers, as well as interviewing politicians, activists and commentators including David Marr and Malcolm Fraser.

She smuggled a pen camera into an Indonesian jail to interview a convicted people smuggler, she talked to whistle blowers in Australia, and in Iran she met with the family of the man killed in the Manus Island riot. Chasing Asylum is a compelling insight into a filmmaker's journey, and a very personal story of the cost, risks and rewards of putting yourself on the line for a film and for a cause.

About the author

Academy and Emmy Award winner Eva Orner is an Australian documentary filmmaker who has been based in Los Angeles and New York for the past decade. Eva returned to Australia in 2014 to work on her latest documentary, Chasing Asylum, released in May 2016, which tackles Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Eva directed and produced The Network (2013) and her producing credits include the feature documentaries Taxi To The Dark Side and Gonzo.

Her work has screened at festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and Sydney, has been released theatrically and sold to television across the globe.

Tom Ducevic writes about growing up in a family of post-war refugees in 1970's Australia

 

Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 272pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

In this exuberant and compelling memoir of family and childhood, readers will be swept away by Tom Dusevic's verve, warmth and honesty.

Suburban Sydney in the 1970s is an adventure playground, especially for a busybody, free-range kid with energy, big appetites and ungodly urges. In such open space, backyards are arenas for daydreaming and free play, scars are marks of wisdom and school is an obstacle course between pleasure and pain. And so is home, as the author tries to make sense of his parents' history and identity, known but unknowable, as post-war refugees from Croatia. He longs to be liberated from the family's quirks and the past and finds his escape in quiet moments of awe and simplicity.

This is a sensory tale of a glorious time to grow up in Australia by a visceral writer whose epiphanies are as startling as they are hilarious. From rowdy street protests and footy crowds, to the serenity of the Roselands Raindrop Fountain and storm-water canals, to the fevered set of a TV quiz show and the disco floor, Dusevic launches himself into the whole wild world.

About the author

Tom Dusevic is a journalist and writer. One of Australia's leading feature writers, he has worked for The Australian, The Weekend Australian Magazine, The Good Weekend and Time Magazine.

'Tom Dusevic's memoir is the most precious kind of reading experience: it is joy on every page. It is beautifully written, vibrant and true: simultaneously a detailed record of an experience of time and place and family, but also transcending simple factual recount to be a work of pure imagination. Tom manages to re-inhabit his Sydney childhood with the perfect writerly combination of immediacy, resonance and distance, and in achieving that balance, he makes the personal universal. Do yourself a favour. Buy this memoir'

-Katharine Murphy, political editor, Guardian Australia

In case you still believe people who come to Australia on boats are queue-jumpers ...

 

Mint condition. PB. 332pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia. 

An excellent antidote to the hatred too often directed at "boat people". 

A family's sacrifice - A nation's struggle 

In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese families set out on perilous journeys in rickety boats to escape communist rule and seek out a better life. Kim Huynh's family was one of them. 

In this unique memoir, Kim traces his parents' precarious lives, from their poor villages in central and southern Vietnam, through relative affluence in Saigon, to their harrowing experiences after the American withdrawal and the fall of Saigon in 1975, which led them to a new life in Australia. 

As Kim explores his parents' stories, he unveils the tragedy and inner strength of ordinary Vietnamese people struggling to survive in a country beset by colonisation and ravaged by war. this gripping story is not only an invaluable piece of political history, but a moving tribute from a son to his parents. 

For fans of Ahn Do's 'the Happiest Refugee' and Pauline Nguyen's 'Secrets of the Red Lantern'.

Fighting for football and freedom

 

Mint condition. PB. 368pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

How people power challenged two monarchies, a military junta, and the world's largest sporting institutions ... and won

Football is the world game. It unites. At a grassroots level it creates communities and, in 2019, those communities helped save the life of one of its own.

In 2012, Hakeem al-Araibi was a promising young player on Bahrain's national football team when he was arrested for attacking a police station during the Arab Spring, despite television footage showing him playing soccer at the time of the alleged attack. After three months of torture and wrongful imprisonment, Hakeem was released. He fled the country and made his way to Australia, where he was granted refugee status. Hakeem made a life here and was playing for the suburban Pascoe Vale Football Club, in Melbourne. He thought he was safe.

But, in November 2018, on a holiday to Thailand with his wife, Hakeem was again arrested. The Bahraini government wanted to extradite him to face a ten-year jail sentence, or worse. What happened next shows the best of what soccer can do, and the worst the governing body of FIFA brings. If it wasn't for the Australian soccer community and former Socceroo Craig Foster, Hakeem may never have been freed.

This powerful memoir reveals how a local soccer legend fought tirelessly to help bring home a man he'd never met. From Pascoe Vale to Switzerland, Canberra to Thailand, Foster raised his voice and tens of thousands of Australians were galvanised to #FreeHakeem. Foster lobbied FIFA and the United Nations and worked with human rights organisations worldwide to enable Hakeem's safe return to his wife in Australia.

Despite being from different backgrounds, religions and generations, Craig Foster and Hakeem al-Araibi are united forever through their love of the world game and their fight for freedom.

Travels with refugees

 

Very good condition. PB. 330pp. $18 including postage anywhere in Australia.

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Traveling for nearly two years and across four continents, Caroline Moorehead takes readers on a journey to understand why millions of people are forced to abandon their homes, possessions, and families in order to find a place where they may, quite literally, be allowed to live.

Moorehead's experience living and working with refugees puts a human face on the news, providing unforgettable portraits of the refugees she meets in Cairo, Guinea, Sicily, Lebanon, England, Australia, Finland, and at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Human Cargo" changes our understanding of what it means to have and lose a place in the world, and reveals how the refugee "problem" is on a par with global crises such as terrorism and world hunger.

Caroline Moorehead, a distinguished biographer, has served as a columnist on human rights for "The Times" (London) and "The Independent" (London).

More recently, she has worked directly with African refugees in Cairo as a founder of a legal advice office in addition to raising funds for a range of educational projects.

She is the author of "Gellhorn" and lives in London.

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

In spite of the fact that refugees surround us--recent UN estimates suggest that their numbers approach 20 million--few grasp the scale of their presence.

Moorehead's experience living and working with refugees puts a human face on the news, providing indelible portraits of not only refugees but also the countries from which they fled, as well as those that host them, the men and women who help them, and, finally, those who have not.

Moorehead has traveled for nearly two years and across four continents to bring us these unforgettable stories.

Among others, we learn about Salaam, an Iraqi Catholic persecuted by Saddam Hussein's regime, and his struggle to reach San Diego through Mexico with his sister; and Mary, a fifty-year-old American who works with the International Rescue Committee in Guinea to provide schooling for refugees from Iran who escaped a Tehran prison to establish a trauma center in England for victims of torture.

Moorehead illustrates why the "problem" of 20 million people stuck in limbo--unable to work, educate their children, or otherwise contribute to society--is on a par with global crises such as terrorism and world hunger.

“It is Moorehead's sensitivity to . . . historical circumstances and political contingencies--not to mention her considerable skills as a writer and storyteller--that makes her book such a vital contribution to debates over migration . . . She differs from those showy journalists of alarm who view the distress of others as an opportunity for overwrought prose and self-display . . . S]he is devoted to the quiet narration of disquieting fact . . . If her brief is universal, her eye and ear are local, attuned and affixed to the toll of state policies and their historical context. Inevitably, she brings to mind the great Martha Gellhorn, the subject of her last biography, whose 'small, still voice' carried a 'barely contained fury and indignation at the injustice of fate and man against the poor, the weak, the dispossessed.'"- The Nation