“No one wants to become a refugee. No one should have to endure this humiliating and arduous ordeal. Yet, millions do. Even one refugee forced to flee, one refugee forced to return to danger is one too many.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message for World Refugee Day 2011
Showing posts with label War stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War stories. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 April 2012

War close to home

The devil's tears / Steven Horne. Sydney: Macmillan Australia, 2010


The Devil's tears is a gripping novel, which takes the reader right into the heart of East Timor; firstly at the time of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, and then some 22 years later. In 1975, when bloody war raveages his beloved Portuguese Timor, Cesar da Silva flees with his wife and children from a country in flames. Becoming separated from his young family and believing they are dead, Cesar finds passage to Portugal and later Australia. In occupied Timor, Cesar's wife is alive, but her troubles are far from over.
In 1997, more than 20 years later, a young Australian journalist and her photographer are drawn to the killing fields of Timor. Compelled to expose the truth of the terrible suffering of the Timorese people at the hands of the invaders to the world, they become entangled in the da Silva family tragedy.
Through the telling of these two intertwining personal stories the book gives great insight into what happened during the 24 year occupation, when around 100,000 people died from fighting, disease and starvation...
 

Friday, 27 April 2012

Surviving war

Cafe Scheherazade / Arnold Zable. Melbourne, Vic.: Text Publishing 2001

'In Acland Street, St Kilda, there stands a cafe called Scheherazade.'  With this reader begins a journey from Kobe to Paris, from Vilna to Melbourne.  A compelling meditation  on memory and place, Cafe Scheherazade traces the stories of Avram and Masha, the cafe proprieters; Yossel stalking the streets of Warsaw and Shanghai, Laizer exiled to vast Siberian forests and gentle Zalman, searching for the moment when all journeys end. This book faithfully depicts jewish holocaust survivors whose lives reflect the courage of refugees everywhere.