A Norwegian Hope Journey: Between the Strong Sand and White Snow Lives my Hope for a Free Sahara

By Asria Mohamed Taleb
Publication date: October 2010
United Nations Association of Norway

About the author:

Asria Mohamed Taleb was born in the 27th of February Camp in Tindouf, Algeria. She studied journalism and communication at Alarbi ben Mheidy University in Algeria. She has worked for several years in the Saharawi National Radio and Television as a radio programme presenter and producer. She is also an executive member of the board of Saharawi Youth Organisation for four years. She went to Norway in 2010 as part of the Peace Corps programme and stayed a year as an Arabic teacher at the Red Cross Nordic United World College in Fjaler, in Sunnfjord. She is currently working as a dialoguer with Médecins Sans Frontières in Bergen.

Review:

“The 40-pages book sheds light on the difficult conditions which the Saharawi refugees have lived since more than three decades, far away from eyes of the world and in complete disregard by big powers. The writer presents to the readers fragments of her personal experience as a refugee and young Saharawi, who lived the occupation of her country without ever see it. The book contains nine chapters or stories: a Norwegian hope journey, my first impression from Norway, the fire, under the Bergen rain, Sultana eye of victory, Rafto sweet home, the Wall of Shame, Tusen Takk…Norge and about the author.” (Sahara Press Service on December 5, 2011)

Click here to download A Norwegian Hope Journey, by Asria Mohamed Taleb.

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Contribution to: See How Much I Love You

By Luis Leantes
Publication date: 17 September 2009
£9.99

Danielle Smith contributed background notes and wrote an factual socio-historical epilogue for Leantes’ “See How Much I Love You”. Luis Leantes wrote this novel as a love story between Montse, a young girl with an upper middle-class background whose path is laid out for her, and Santiago, her lover, who doesn’t quite know where he belongs, who he belongs to. There is also another narrative of a middle-aged doctor now in a Spanish hospital, then in the Sahara struggling to survive. This unusual dual narrative, jumping back and fro in “then” and “now” every other chapter is slightly confusing. But it’s keeping you on your toes. It urges your eyes on, your fingers to turn the pages needing to find out why and how it was and what it develops to.Most importantly, however, Leantes embeds this love narrative in the complexities of the Western Sahara dispute. He caught the tensions between the Spanish soldiers stationed in the Western Sahara and the Saharawis; the tipping point when the Moroccan military marched into the territory; the epic journey of the Saharawis in an attempt to escape the nearing Moroccans and the napalm bombs.

Newspaper Review:

“This book exemplifies George Bernard Shaw’s contention that it is only through fiction that facts can be made instructive or intelligible, the writer rescuing them from the chaos of their occurrence as he arranges them into a work of art” (G. Parsons in the Morning Star on July 22, 2009)