MY HAND IN MINE (MIN HAND I MIN)
Atefeh Sebdani
A little girl clings to her mother, but grown hands pry her from her mother’s arms.
Later, the girl sits on a worn out bus travelling along dusty roads towards an unknown destination. She has her arms around her little brothers and comforts them with their mother’s last words: We will see each other again soon.
Why do you abandon your children? Atefeh is five years old when she and her brothers are smuggled to Europe. Her parents are soldiers in an Iranian resistance movement and remain in the organisation’s military camp. In one fell swoop, the five-year-old is the mother of her brothers.
My Hand in Mine is a story about growing up with no one to hold on to but yourself, of abuses that are skillfully covered up and a society that time and again fails to see the vulnerable child. But it is also a story of a stubborn burning vitality and the courage to finally break free.
345 pages
Sample and full synopsis available in English. Order here.
Rights
Estonia: Sinisukk
Finland: Atena
Norway: Pax
Persian rights: Baran
Sweden: Albert Bonniers Förlag
REVIEWS
“A very worth-reading memoir that gives insight into what it is like to escape from one country and grow up in another, and what it means to be a woman in an environment where male desire rules.”
Nina Morby, Göteborgs-Posten / SWE