Avareh bi Khorshid
(Without Roof, Without Sun)
By Mohammad Hadi Mohammadi, illus. by Hassan Amehkan.
Tehran : Cheesta Publishing Co, 2004, pp. 112, ill.
ISBN : 964-7940-00-9

• The writer has selected a topic, which the world today is struggling with as a big problem: those who have fled their homeland and become homeless and those who have taken them in. A large number of these refugees are children who make up the most vulnerable layer of the society. The reflection of this universal phenomenon in children’s literature, like works done on environment or multi-cultural affairs, has created a new genre in the children’s literature in the past decade. Many writers and illustrators have made attempts to picture this worldwide difficulty with artistic expression.
• Mohammad Hadi Mohammadi, the Iranian writer, inspired by the painful lives of hundreds of refugee Afghan children living in Iran, has made an effort to picture the pain of homelessness and the feeling of being rejected in a new society, in a novel for young adults.
• Using a new structure in story writing, he hands his pen to his Afghan counterpart to tell the sufferings of himself and the children of his homeland. From the very beginning he makes it clear that two people make this story. The writer who is now sitting in place of an Afghan writer and an Afghan child about whom he wants to write. He puts all hope in his Afghan counterparts and Afghan children to begin a full new life once again.