Sea Prayer [HB] by Khaled Hosseini
About The Book
A short, powerful, illustrated book written by Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city's swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone. Impelled to write this story by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015, Hosseini hopes to pay tribute to the millions of families, like Kurdi's, who have been splintered and forced from home by war and persecution, and he will donate author proceeds from this book to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.
Review
"This is a slim book, but one that readers young and old won’t soon forget." – Bookish
"Powerful." – Time Magazine
"Slim, but essential. . . In its elevation of the pastoral and critique of a dark reality through the interplay of word and image, Sea Prayer calls to mind William Blake’s humanitarian ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience.’ The text’s minimalism complements London illustrator Dan Williams’ gorgeous watercolor and ink illustrations." – San Francisco Chronicle
" ‘Sea Prayer’ will take your breath away with its simplicity and grace . . . I started digging into this short masterpiece. The world stopped . . . I carried it around for a month, reading it everywhere." – The Florida Times-Union
"The book may be brief, but it is beautiful, poetic – a distillation of his strengths … It combines Hosseini’s multiple personae, as a wordsmith, as a father and even as a doctor." – The Sunday Times Magazine
"Dan Williams’s watercolours are a haunting companion to the contemplative and poetic story of a father fleeing Syria with his son. Though considerably shorter than The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns or And the Mountains Echoed, it opens up as many powerful emotions about family, survival and childhood." – The Guardian
"Hosseini’s story, aimed at readers of all ages, does not dwell on nightmarish fates; instead, its emotional power flows from the love of a father for his son . . . In Williams’s loosely stroked ink-and-wash spreads, the corals and greens of the Syrian countryside give way to war’s gray shadows and the sea’s blue hues. Expansive views of sky and water both temper the text’s emotional build and render the figures in them small and fragile. Together, the evocative illustrations and graceful, compelling prose make it clear that Marwan and his parents have no choice but to trust the sea." – Publishers Weekly
About Author
Khaled Hosseini
Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. In 1970 Hosseini and his family moved to Iran where his father worked for the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tehran. In 1973 Hosseini's family returned to Kabul, and Hosseini's youngest brother was born in July of that year. In 1976, when Hosseini was 11 years old, Hosseini's father obtained a job in Paris, France, and moved the family there. They were unable to return to Afghanistan because of the Saur Revolution in which the PDPA communist party seized power through a bloody coup in April 1978. Instead, a year after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1980 they sought political asylum in the United States and made their residence in San Jose, California. Hosseini graduated from Independence High School in San Jose in 1984 and enrolled at Santa Clara University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology in 1988. The following year, he entered the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, where he earned his M.D. in 1993. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1996. He practiced medicine for over ten years, until a year and a half after the release of The Kite Runner. Hosseini is currently a Goodwill Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He has been working to provide humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan through the Khaled Hosseini Foundation. The concept for the foundation was inspired by the trip to Afghanistan that Hosseini made in 2007 with UNHCR. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Roya, and their two children (Harris and Farah).
| Author | Khaled Hosseini |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date | 30 Aug. 2018 |
| Edition | 1st Edition |
| Language | English |
| Number of page | 48 Pages |
| Product Dimensions | 24.7 x 1.2 x 16 cm |
| Binding | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781526605917 |
| In the box | 1 x Main Product |