The Girl From Aleppo: Nujeens Escape From War to Freedom
By (Author) Nujeen Mustafa
With Christina Lamb
HarperCollins Publishers
William Collins
2nd May 2017
20th April 2017
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Autobiography: general
Refugees and political asylum
Disability: social aspects
True stories of heroism, endurance and survival
Middle Eastern history
Political oppression and persecution
956.91042092
Paperback
320
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 25mm
310g
She is our hero. Everyone must read her story. She will inspire you Malala Yousafzai
An inspiring tale of a young disabled girl and her escape from the hell of war.
Nujeen Mustafa has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. This did not stop her braving inconceivable odds to travel in her wheelchair from Syria in search of a new life. Sharing her full story for the first time, Nujeen recounts the details of her childhood and disability, as well as the specifics of her harrowing journey across the Mediterranean to Greece and finally to Germany to seek an education and the medical treatment she needs.
Nujeen's story has already touched millions and in this book written with Christina Lamb, bestselling co-author of I Am Malala, she helps to put a human face on a global emergency.
Trapped in a fifth floor apartment in Aleppo and unable to go to school, she taught herself to speak English by watching US television. As civil war between Assad's forces and ISIS militants broke out around them, Nujeen and her family fled first to her native Kobane, then Turkey before they joined thousands of displaced persons in a journey to Europe and asylum. She wanted to come to Europe, she said, to become an astronaut, to meet the Queen and to learn how to walk.
In her strong, positive voice, Nujeen tells the story of what it is really like to be a refugee, to have grown up in a dictatorship only for your life to be blighted by war; to have left a beloved homeland to become dependent on others. It is the story of our times told through the incredible bravery of one remarkable girl determined to keep smiling.
The story of Nujeen, amazing young woman and Syrian refugee, reminds the world that refugees, just like others, have aspirations and dreams for peace, education and a better society. Nujeen inspires me to dream without limits
MALALA YOUSAFZAI
Spirited and humbling, and is proof that a refugee is a person first, a statistic last, Books of the Year, Sunday Times
Extraordinary. We have heard many accounts of refugees journeys in the past couple of years but none like this one. If it was Lamb who wrote the words, you sense it is Nujeens spirit she has caught. The is important chronicle of our strange and terrible times seems likely, in fact, to make her a star The Times
THE GIRL FROM ALEPPO is a book about a truly remarkable disabled young girl refugee from Syria. I read it in 24 hours without a dry eye. Not tears of sadness tears of joy about the glory of a triumphant human spirit. Go on. I challenge you. I bet you cannot read this, dry eyed, to the end PADDY ASHDOWN
Christina Lamb is Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Sunday Times. She was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year in all the British media awards in 2002 for her reporting on the war on terrorism. She has won numerous other awards starting with Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards for her coverage of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, a country she has been reporting on since she was 21, News Reporter of the Year, Foreign Reporter of the Year in the British Press Awards and What the Papers Say Awards. She is the author of the best-selling The Africa House as well as Waiting For Allah Pakistan's struggle for democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and House of Stone.