"A writer who can understand man wherever he is." "The New York Times"Khadra's prose is gentle and precise." "The New Yorker"As a child living in a ghetto, Turambo dreamt of a better future. When his family find a home in the city anything seems possible. Through a succession of menial jobs, the constants for Turambo are rage at the injustice surrounding him, and a reliable left hook. A boxing apprenticeship offers Turambo a choice.Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of the Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul. He is the author of more than twenty novels, including "The Swallows of Kabul."

'Darling, this is Younes. Yesterday he was my nephew, today he is our son'. Younes' life is changed forever when his poverty-stricken parents surrender him to the care of his more affluent uncle. Re-named Jonas, he grows up in a colourful colonial Algerian town, and forges a unique friendship with a group of boys, an enduring bond that nothing - not even the Algerian Revolt - will shake. He meets Emilie - a beautiful, beguiling girl who captures the hearts of all who see her - and an epic love story is set in motion. Time and again Jonas is forced to to choose between two worlds: Algerian or European; past or present; love or loyalty, and finally decide if he will surrender to fate or take control of his own destiny at last. AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER.

The Attack opens with Amin Jaafari, an Israeli surgeon of Palestinian after the deadly attack, an Israeli police officer informs Jaafari that the suicide bomber was his wife, Sihem. Believing her to be on an overnight trip, he completely refuses to accept the accusation. They were leading an ideal life in Tel Aviv, moving among both Arab and Israeli society with ease, or so Jaafari thought. But then he receives a posthumous message from Sihem confirming the worst. Desperate to understand how he missed even the slightest clue, Jaafari leaves the relative security of Israel and enters the Palestinian territories to find the fanatics who recruited her. In search of the truth, he confronts a reality that he had refused to see. This book was first published as the French novel L'Attentat by Yasmina Khadra in 2005. One year later, L'Attentat was translated into English as The Attack and it garnered international praise: 'A fierce rendering of geopolitical tensions and a plea for peace' (The New York Times); 'Audaciously conceived, courageously important [and] urgently humane' (The Los Angeles Times). It was translated into more than 20 languages and sold over 600,000 copies. Then in 2012, the original French book went into graphic form with the release in 2012 of L'Attentat by Loic Dauvillier and Glen Chapron. This has now been translated into English by Ivanka Hahnenberger - the book featured here. The Attack is a poignant tragedy that mixes the intimacy of grief and betrayal with the futility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It makes no judgment and takes no side. Chapron's masterful illustrations and astute text are wrought with the despair and hope of Jaafari's search. The raw humanity of the story raises more questions than can be answered. Timely and affecting, The Attack is an essential purchase.

"Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done badly; evil done well." And such is the twisted logic of good and bad, right and wrong, knitted into this novella by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from North Africa in our time. With his father brutally killed as a traitor during a national liberation war and his older brother an army officer far away, the young narrator lives reclusively with his mother, who scorns him. He turns to his young cousin for affection, only to be mocked and humiliated so deeply that his love becomes hopelessly entangled with hatred. Fate places a young woman in the narrator's path when he rescues her from a violent attack, and the reawakening of his confused passions proceeds toward terrible vengeance. In this nameless narrator's tormented reflections, played out against the backdrop of an indifferent world, Yasmina Khadra plumbs the mysteries of the crippled heart's desires.

Tel Aviv. A suicide bomber has killed 19 in a packed city centre restaurant. Dr Amin Jaafie, an Israeli Arab, is a surgeon at a nearby hospital. Respected and admired by his colleagues, the doctor represents integration at its most successful. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn as his beloved wife's body is found among the dead... could she have caused the devestation? From the graphic, shocking description of the bombing that opens the novel to its searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its costs. Intense and humane, thoughtful, sensitive and heartfelt, it displays a profound understanding of that which can seem incomprehensible.

Since the ascendancy of the Taliban the lives of Mosheen and his beautiful wife, Zunaira, have been gradually destroyed. Mosheen's dream of becoming a diplomat has been shattered and Zunaira can no longer even appear on the streets of Kabul unveiled. Atiq is a jailer who guards those who have been condemned to death; the darkness of prison and the wretchedness of his job have seeped into his soul. Atiq's wife, Musarrat, is suffering from an illness no doctor can cure. Yet, the lives of these four people are about to become inexplicably interwined, through death and imprisonment to passion and extraordinary self-sacrifice. The Swallows of Kabul is an astounding and elegiac novel of four people struggling to hold on to their humanity in a place where pleasure is a deadly sin and death has become a banality.

The third novel in Yasmina Khadra's bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion.
A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. "The Sirens of Baghdad" is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist.