"It reminds me that as long as the lemon trees grow, hope will never die".
I have seen this book reviewed many times over on Bookstagram and I love a story that educates and entertains me, and As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow, certainly did this.
I listened to it as an audiobook, read by Rasha Zamamiri and it was haunting. Whilst the majority of us are living free lives, enjoying vacations and being able to travel anywhere we want to, there is still a war continuing in Syria that has been going on for 13 years! I cannot even begin to imagine what that must be like to live through.
As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow is an absolutely incredible story with beautiful imagery, but it’s so sad. I’m sure the war in Syria is something that many people will be aware of, yet many won’t know to what extent it has affected and is affecting the people of that country. No one actually wants to leave all that they know and get on a boat to sail to who knows where. They do it because they have no choice if they want to stay alive.
Salama is our protagonist and an amazingly strong female character who is working hard to try to find a way for her and her pregnant sister-in-law to escape her beloved, yet war-torn country. Does she make it? You need to read it for yourself to find out.
As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow is classed as a YA book but is definitely a book which should be read by everyone, regardless of age.
About the Book
Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager’s life.
Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.
But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.
Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are—not a war, but a revolution—and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom.
About Zoulfa
Zoulfa Katouh is a Canadian writer with Syrian roots. A trilingual pharmacist, currently pursuing a master’s in drug sciences, Zoulfa is the first Syrian author to be published in both the US and the UK in the young adult category. When she's not talking to herself in the woodland forest, she's drinking iced coffee, baking aesthetic cookies and cakes, and telling everyone who will listen about how BTS paved the way. A dream of hers is to get Kim Nam-joon to read one of her books. As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow is her debut novel.
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