AFSANA PRESS
STORIES THAT MATTER
Stories that Matter
Afsana Press is an independent publishing house producing sparkling literary works by authors whose stories have a direct relation to social, political or cultural issues in countries and communities around the world
Old Masters in Marrakesh
By James Debens
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 Adolf Eichmann, he is obsessed with avenging the deaths of his parents and the restitution of looted art by the Nazis...
The Resurrected
They were meant to be dead, buried under the sand. But they survived. Two young Kurds manage to miraculously escape Saddam Hussein’s killing grounds to eventually find their way to America. A story of luck, nerve and perseverance, with many setbacks along
the way...
The Last Pomegranate Tree
By Bachtyar Ali
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...
The Almond Garden of Kabul
By Mandana Hendessi
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,..
Songs of Freedom
An Anthology by Iranian and Afghan Women Poets
Click here to read in the book...
Ten women poets from Iran and Afghanistan share their ideas, emotions, desires and worldviews with lovers of poetry, in celebration of life and freedom. Featuring poems by:..
Hyphenated Lives
Native Diasporas
By TK Sebastian
A striking young man in his late twenties, Toros lives with his mother, Meriam and younger sister, Silva in south-west Turkey. It is the spring of 1956, and other than the haunting memories of the autumn, there has been little to evoke the pains of their past lives. None, in fact, except...
The Good, the Bad and the Gringo
By Kae Bahar
Click here to read in the book...
At the age of ten, Merywan Rashaba's life is shattered when the local Mullah declares him a neuter. 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...
Oh, Sugar
By Jane Labous
Click here to read in the book...
When disgraced journalist Dolly Fontaine discovers that her mother, the seventies film star Gloria Fontaine, was a spy recruited by the British Intelligence Services to ensnare a ruthless Lusenkan dictator, past and present collide with dangerous consequences.
Winter Sun
By Miki Lentin
Click here to read in the book...
A novel depicting a spiky father-son relationship 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...
Whispering Walls
By Choman Hardi
The U.S. invasion of Iraq is looming. Three siblings – two in London, one in Slemany – recall their troubled pasts. Stories of war, displacement, and coming to terms with the tragedies of a Kurdish family, all told from the siblings' varying perspectives...
The Man Who Was a Tree
By Goran Baba Ali
A street photographer is the first who sees in a dreamy, fuddled vision the creature by the side of a river at the outskirts of the city, starting him on an obsessive journey. This would enchain a series of events bringing the city into turmoil and change his own life...
Past Participle
By Jane Labous
A troubled Senegalese lawyer investigates her brother's death, three decades ago in Dakar, at the hands of a British diplomat's wife. 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...
Inner Core
By Miki Lentin
Death, anxiety, masculinity, family and children, social good - and rocks. All things that touch the life of a middle-aged man. In these stories, written over the past two years, author Miki Lentin goes in search of a rock with his child in Ireland, travels sleep-deprived to Istanbul with...
The Glass Wall
By Goran Baba Ali
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...