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Cover of As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh

As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow

  • 425 pages ยท about 7 hours
  • First published 2022
  • 11 editions

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1 About this book

Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student, with her parents, her older brother and an ordinary life, when the calls for freedom began in Syria. Now she volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who come through its doors every day. In secret she is desperate to find a way out of the country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. Her fear has taken the form of an imagined companion, Khawf, who follows her everywhere and presses her to keep herself safe. Zoulfa Katouh's young adult novel was published in 2022.

  • Survival
  • Young adult fiction
  • War & military
  • Fear
  • Hospitals
  • Civil war
  • Women

2 What to expect

A young adult novel set in Homs during the Syrian civil war, about a former pharmacy student who works in a hospital and must decide whether to flee the country she loves. The daily horror of the war is set beside her loyalty to her family and a vision of her own fear as a figure only she can see. It is emotional and often harrowing, with the injuries of war shown plainly.

3 About Zoulfa Katouh

Born 1994

Zoulfa Katouh (born March 29, 1994) is a Canadian author of young adult fiction. Her debut novel, As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow, was published in 2022.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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