Good Muslim Boy

Author: Osamah Sami

Publisher: Richmond, Victoria: Hardie Grant Books, 2015

Annotation: 

Good Muslim Boy is the humourously told memoir of actor, writer and comedian Osamah Sami. Born to an Iranian father and Kurdish mother, who met in an Iraqi refugee camp, Sami's early life was marked by conflict; he lost a brother in the war and witnessed a public execution. Boyish shenanigans like selling blackmarket fireworks and trying to hold hands with girls earned him floggings at the hands of the piety police. After moving to Melbourne at 12, where his dad got a job teaching Arabic literature and lead the local mosque, Osamah still cannot avoid getting into trouble -- whether finding a way out of a proposed arranged marriage or pretending to study medicine for a year to placate his parents. 

 

"Good Muslim Boy is a hilarious and heartbreaking memoir of love, loss and family." (Blurb on back cover) It won the 2016 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and the 2015 International Golden Phoenix Award for contribution to Iraqi Culture in diaspora.

Additional formats: Also available as an audiobook

For more information:

• Osamah Sami (author's website)
• ABC (interview with the author)
• Sydney Morning Herald (interview with the author)
• SBS (interview with the author)
• Goodreads

Five Bells

Author: Gail Jones

Publisher: New York: Picador, 2012

Annotation: 

Told over the course of a single Saturday in Sydney, Five Bells weaves together the stories of four characters -- country girl Ellie, who is new to the city, her childhood friend, the heavily medicated James, Dublin native Catherine and Pei Xing, whose family fled China's Cultural Revolution -- all of them dealing with personal sorrows and secret guilt.

Library Journal praises the book's "deliberate pacing and introspective style," saying "this is a book for contemplative readers willing to lose themselves in the characters' journeys between present and past".

For more information:

• Picador (publisher)
• The Guardian
• Goodreads

The book of ordinary people

Author: Claire Varley

Publisher:  Pan Macmillan, 2018

Annotation: 

This hopeful and engaging character driven novel focuses on the lives of five strangers living in the suburbs of north Melbourne -- a woman in mourning, a man stuck on the corporate treadmill, a failed journalist, an idealistic lawyer and an asylum-seeker caught in bureaucratic limbo and unable to move forward with her life. 

Reviewer Amanda Mcleod says author Claire Varley's past experience working with migrants and refugee communities lends this book "an authentic voice and genuine gravitas", adding: “The Book Of Ordinary People perfectly captures modern-day multicultural Australia.” (Writing NSW)

For more information:

• Pan MacMillan (publisher)
• Goodreads
• Writing NSW

No man is an island

Author: Adele Dumont

Publisher:  Sydney, NSW: Hachette Australia, 2016

Annotation: 

When Adele Dumont was 24, she volunteered to teach English to men held in detention on Christmas Island. Finding the work rewarding, she later took a job teaching English at the Curtin detention centre, near the remote desert town of Derby, Western Australia. Dumont provides a thoughtful, insider view on Australia's immigration policies through her thoughtful reflection on her years spent working with limited resources among men who have fled persecution and difficult circumstances in their home countries and found themselves in detention, facing uncertain futures. No Man is an Island has been described as "essential reading for anyone who assumes they understand what the asylum seeker issue is all about, regardless of their opinion." (Sydney Morning Herald)

For more information:

• Hachette (publisher)
• Goodreads
• Sydney Morning Herald

We are here: my family's courageous journey to survive

Author:  Cat Thao Nguyen

Publisher:  Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015

Annotation: 

Born in a refugee camp on the borders of Cambodia and Thailand to parents fleeing war in Vietnam, Cat Thao Nguyen tells the story of how her family came to settle in Australia and her experiences growing up in Western Sydney in the 80s and 90s. In this candid memoir, described as "unflinching in its detail of the many tortured steps to freedom," (Sydney Morning Herald) Nguyen unpacks the sacrifices made by her family as they struggle to overcome the scars of their past traumas and make a new life for themselves in a society that is not always welcoming.

For more information:

• Allen & Unwin (publisher)
• Goodreads
• Sydney Morning Herald