The Books
Over the years I've been writing, I've managed to publish two novels that have commanded the bulk of my creative spirit to complete. The first and more experimental of the two, Blackbodying, took a relatively short four years to complete over the course of undergraduate and graduate degrees, and was a comparatively easy novel to birth. The second and more ambitious in scope, Niko, proved a lot harder to get right and went through many versions and revisions before arriving at a satisfying end six years later.
Niko (2011)
Six-year-old Niko Karam has never known a life outside civil war. He rarely leaves his parents’ small apartment, and from its small balcony he listens to the world outside tumble down one building at a time. But after a car bomb kills his pregnant mother, Niko is thrust into a much wider and confusing world. Swiftly paced, poignantly moving, and beautifully imagined, Niko is a powerful epic story of what it takes to survive during and after war.
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Blackbodying (2005)
Blackbodying recounts the first-hand exile stories of two Lebanese citizens and their routes to Canada. Both have been forced to leave their homeland as a result of civil war, but only the first is afforded the opportunities the second so badly wants.
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Piece by Piece: Stories About Fitting Into Canada (2010)
This anthology features stories by some of Canada's finest authors who were born in another country and who went through the experience of trying to "fit in." Exploring the time and incidents, dating from the shock of first impressions to the author's first stirrings of "becoming Canadian" and what that meant to them, the young adult audience is a perfectly tuned readership for this collection. Whether the teens were born in Canada or not, both the newly arrived and young adults share a powerful desire to fit in, to be accepted.
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