from amazon.de:
Survival is hard in a land where no woman can live alone Layla is just thirteen when the men with the beards and guns burn down her beloved father's school and begin to terrorise the Swat valley region of Pakistan. She has to flee, exchanging the tranquil beauty of the Himalayas for the squalor of a camp for refugees from the Taliban near Peshawar. With her life torn apart by tragedy, Layla must choose between the old fashioned way of life with her family - or a journey into independence which could threaten her very survival. Trying to find out what lies behind mysterious deaths at the camp is foreign correspondent Ellen Thomas. As a strong woman in a man's world, Ellen is used to risking her life to uncover the truth. United by the gentle schoolteacher who had risked his life to save books, the paths of Layla and Ellen collide in a common cause.

Fulfillment of a wishlist tag.
Personal handover over a cup of coffee. :-)

Thanks for tagging me with this! I recently read Jill McGivering's previous novel The Last Kestrel - and then added this one to my wishlist... here it comes already.
Great to meet you again!

A powerful, interesting novel. Quite a pageturner, with lots of background information about life in refugee camps.
It's fiction, but as Jill McGivering is a journalist and has spent a lot of time in Pakistan and Afghanistan I assume that what she writes about is based on her own experience. I appreciate that she converts this into a novel and thus (I hope) changes things enough so that nobody she met can be recognised - contrary to other writers who endangered people by writing about them (like Deborah Rodriguez).
(What I didn't find convincing at all is how long it took them to realise that drugs might be fake... come on, people who work in the health sector in a Third World country are very aware of this...)
Still, very recommendable!

Travelling to Portugal

The book's now in Lisbon. I must admit I feel some expectation about this book. Because it allows me to compare similar experiences in refugee camps and also because it's not translated into Portuguese (as far as I know). It will be a quick read and a quick release, maybe starting with a few volunteers with similar experience.

And I enjoyed the stamps on the envelope ( I always use them too ) and also the Bremen Postcard and ... the mini book.
Thank you very much ApolloniaX

It took a long time to put this book on top of my reading shelf. But it really is an interesting story. Liked the central character ( Layla )who is presented to us through the first person. The author gives Layla a very convincing voice and her relationship with family is engaging. Equally evocative are the descriptions of Pakistan itself. Even if the refugee camp description reveals an "outside" looking (at least in my point a view, since I've worked before in refugee camps), the main message is there : we , the readers, could well be also refugees. When see these people we can imagine ourselves in their place.
Thanks for this book. I think I'll free it in my Little Free Library/OBCZ in Lisbon

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