Six global books that you need on your spring reading list

World Book Day is the perfect time to dive into new stories and perspectives.

Our head bookworm at ShelterBox has handpicked six thoughtful recommendations to refresh your reading list this spring.

These selections promise to whisk you away on journeys of discovery, resilience, and hope—all themes close to ShelterBox’s heart.

Ready to explore the titles that could become your next literary escape? Let’s get turning those pages!

Click here to purchase these book recommendations, with a 10% ShelterBox discount!

What to read this spring

Syria

1. The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

In 2011, the peace of the Syrian city of Homs is disturbed by protests and shelling. A young girl, Nour, is forced to flee across the Levant and North Africa in search of safety.

800 years before, Rawiya, disguised as a boy and apprenticed to a famous map maker, set out on an epic quest to chart the globe, following the very same route.

In The Map of Salt & Stars, the tales of these two heroines coming of age in perilous times interweave, and shine a light on a country in turmoil, human resilience and the power of stories.

Gaza

2. Before the Queen Falls Asleep by Huzama Habayeb (translated by Kay Heikkinen)

Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy’s clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father.

Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her daughter a story from her life. As Maleka prepares to leave home to attend university abroad, her mother revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up.

Huzama Habayeb weaves a richly observed and affectionate portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their homeland, exploring with humour and poise the love and betrayal that pursues Jihad and her family from Kuwait to Jordan to Dubai. This is a novel whose words will resound long after you finish the final page.

Philippines 

3. In the Country by Mia Alvar

These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora.

Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again.

In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar’s powerful debut collection explores the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. Deeply compassionate and richly felt, In the Country marks the emergence of a formidable new writer.

Ethiopia

4. The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam 

A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was ten years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition.

She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children.

Aida Edemariam retells her grandmother’s stories of a childhood surrounded by proud priests and soldiers, of her husband’s imprisonment, of her fight for justice – all of it played out against an ancient cycle of festivals and the rhythms of the seasons.

Somalia

5. A Woman of Firsts by Edna Adan Ismail 

A Woman of Firsts tells the inspirational story of a remarkable daughter, nurse and First Lady. The indomitable Edna Adan Ismail survived imprisonment, persecution, and civil war to become a pioneering politician, a leading light in the World Health Organisation, and a global campaigner for women’s rights.

The eldest child of an overworked doctor in the British Protectorate of Somaliland, Edna was the first midwife in Somaliland, she campaigned tirelessly for better healthcare for women and fought for women on a global stage as the first female Foreign Minister of her country. But mixing with presidents and princes, she still never forgot her roots and continued to deliver children and train midwives – a role she has to this day.

At 81 years old, she still runs what is hailed as the Horn of Africa’s finest university hospital where she trains future generations and still delivers babies.

Sudan and Chad 

6. A Mouth Full of Salt by Reem Gaafar

A small farming village on the banks of the Nile in North Sudan is beset by mysterious calamities. A young boy goes missing, animals start dying inexplicably, and a great fire engulfs the date gardens. The villagers whisper of a sorceress who dwells at the foot of the mountains.

Some thirty years earlier in Khartoum, a single mother makes her way in a world that wants to keep girls and women back. As civil war swells, the political intrudes into the personal and her position in the capital becomes untenable. She must return to the village.

In an early print-run of the paperback exclusively for us, A Mouth Full of Salt uncovers a country on the brink of seismic change.

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Click here to purchase these book recommendations, with a 10% ShelterBox discount!