FICTION
THE BOAT PEOPLE
By Sharon Bala
Doubleday/ Paperback/ 338 pages/ $29.43/ Books Kinokuniya
When a rusty cargo ship arrives in Vancouver, the 500 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers aboard are thrown into prison as the authorities debate whether it is safe to let them into the country.
Young father Mahindan will do anything to keep his son Sellian safe. But despite the best efforts of his lawyer Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan-Canadian, he may be parted from his child.
Grace, the adjudicator deciding Mahindan's fate, grapples with her own identity as the descendant of Japanese immigrants.
FICTION
THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS
By Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
Weidenfeld & Nicolson/ Paperback/ 360 pages/ $29.95/ Books Kinokuniya
Nour, a young Syrian-American girl, loses her home in Homs in a bombing and must make her way with her map-maker mother and sisters to safety in Ceuta, Morocco, in this novel by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar.
Her journey mirrors that of Rawiya, apprentice to the legendary 12th-century cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi, who plans to map the world.
FICTION
SEA PRAYER
By Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead/Hardcover/48 pages/ Publishing in September
A short, illustrated book by Khaled Hosseini in the form of a letter from a father to his son on the eve of their dangerous sea-crossing.
NON-FICTION
MY COUNTRY
By Kassem Eid
Bloomsbury/Paperback/ 195 pages/$29.95/ Books Kinokuniya
After Kassem Eid nearly died in a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds in his town of Moadamiya, Syria, he picked up a gun for the first time and joined the Free Syrian Army.
He wrote blog posts about daily life during the civil war, even going on a 30-day hunger strike, to keep the world's attention on Syria.
In 2014, he escaped to the US and testified before the United Nations Security Council.
NON-FICTION
THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS
By Clemantine Wamariya (below) and Elizabeth Weil
Hutchinson/ Paperback/ 273 pages/ $29.95/ Books Kinokuniya
Clemantine Wamariya became a refugee at the age of six, when she and her sister Claire were separated from their family during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Over the next six years, they moved through seven African countries until they were granted refugee status in the United States.
She recounts not just her journey, but also her struggle to settle down in the US, cope with the limelight and deal with the trauma her experiences had left her with.
NON-FICTION
BUTTERFLY
By Yusra Mardini (below) with Josie Le Blond
Bluebird/Paperback/283 pages/ $33.95/Books Kinokuniya
Yusra Mardini learnt to swim before she could walk. She dreamt of representing Syria in the Olympics, but war drove her and her sister Sara to flee Damascus, where bombs fell around her daily as she trained.
She chronicles their journey to Europe, during which they spent three hours in the sea after their boat began to sink.
NON-FICTION
THE FOX HUNT
By Mohammed Al Samawi
William Morrow/ Paperback/ 336 pages/ $43.33/ Books Kinokuniya
Born a Shi'ite Muslim in Yemen, Mohammed Al Samawi was raised to hate Jews, but began to doubt his teachings after secretly receiving a copy of the Bible.
His attempts to build bridges among Jews, Muslims and other faiths earned him death threats and forced him to flee to Aden, where he was caught up in a civil war.
His desperate appeal for help on social media was answered by four young activists in the US and Israel who barely knew him, but who over the next 13 days pulled out all the stops to get him to safety in the US.
