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White Teeth

White Teeth
  • Author(s): Zadie Smith
  • Location(s): London
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s-90s

This is a hilarious and poignant story of two North London families, headed by Archie and by Archie’s best friend and Samas Iqbal, a Muslim originally from Bengal. An unlikely friendship they served together in the Second World War....

The Syrian’s Story

The Syrian’s Story
  • Author(s): Zahara Schara
  • Location(s): Syria
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): early 21st century

Amir and his family are among the 3 million Syrian refugees stuck in a situation beyond their control. Amir wants his very young daughter to know the truth about the Syria he knew and the reason they fled, so...

Diplomacy

Diplomacy
  • Author(s): Zahra Owens
  • Location(s): Brussels
  • Genre(s): Fiction, LGBTQ+
  • Era(s): early 2000s

Jack Christensen has everything he ever wanted. He’s a rising star in US Diplomacy, the youngest man to have been appointed as an Ambassador of the United States. A career diplomat who’s just been sent to a politically interesting...

Ways of Dying

Ways of Dying
  • Author(s): Zakes Mda
  • Location(s): South Africa
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

In Ways of Dying, Zakes Mda’s acclaimed first novel, Toloki is a “professional mourner” in a vast and violent city of the new South Africa. Day after day he attends funerals in the townships, dressed with dignity in a...

The Other Black Girl

The Other Black Girl
  • Author(s): Zakiya Dalila Harris
  • Location(s): Manhattan
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being...

Close to the Wind

Close to the Wind
  • Author(s): Zana Bell
  • Location(s): Cape Town, Dunedin
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): 1868

Georgiana da Silva is catapulted out of the Victorian drawing rooms and into a world of danger when she escapes her fiendish fiance to engage in a mad dash across the world to save her brother before an unknown...

Fool’s Gold

Fool’s Gold
  • Author(s): Zana Bell
  • Location(s): Hokitika, South Island
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Romance
  • Era(s): Mid 1800s

Love—is it worth its weight in gold? It’s 1866 and the gold rush is on. Left to fend for herself in the wilds of New Zealand’s west coast, Lady Guinevere Stanhope is determined to do whatever it takes to...

The Bone Sparrow

The Bone Sparrow
  • Author(s): Zana Fraillon
  • Location(s): Australia
  • Genre(s): Young Adult
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Winner of the CILIP Amnesty Honour 2017. Shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017. Perfect for fans of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS. This is a beautiful, vivid and deeply moving story...

A Promise To Nadia

A Promise To Nadia
  • Author(s): Zana Muhsen
  • Location(s): Yemen
  • Genre(s): Autobiography/Memoirs
  • Era(s): Contemporary

Ten years previously Zana Muhsen escaped from the life of slavery in the Yemen into which her father had sold her as a child bride, leaving behind her baby son, her sister Nadia, and Nadia’s two small children. As...

Sold

Sold
  • Author(s): Zana Muhsen
  • Location(s): Yemen
  • Genre(s): Nonfiction
  • Era(s): Modern

Zana Muhsen, born and bred in Birmingham, is of Yemeni origin. When her father told her she was to spend a holiday with relatives in North Yemen, she jumped at the chance. Aged 15 and 13 respectively, Zana and...

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