Homes: A Refugee Story

2019 Canada Reads Audience Choice Winner and Finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the Shaugnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

In 2010, the al Rabeeah family left their home in Iraq in hope of a safer life. They moved to Homs, in Syria - just before the Syrian civil war broke out.

Abu Bakr, one of eight children, was ten years old when the violence began on the streets around him: car bombings, attacks on his mosque and school, firebombs late at night. Homes tells of the strange juxtapositions of growing up in a war zone: horrific, unimaginable events punctuated by normalcy - soccer, cousins, video games, friends.

Homes is the remarkable true story of how a young boy emerged from a war zone - and found safety in Canada - with a passion for sharing his story and telling the world what is truly happening in Syria. As told to her by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah, writer Winnie Yeung has crafted a heartbreaking, hopeful, and urgently necessary book that provides a window into understanding Syria.

Abu Bakr al Rabeeah lives in Edmonton, Canada. Homes: A Refugee Story was on CBC's Canada Reads 2019 and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing.

Winnie has been an English teacher for over ten years. Homes is her first book and received extensive critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction and the 2019 Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing. Homes was also a finalist on CBC's Canada Reads 2019. When she is not teaching, writing, or reading, Winnie likes to spend her days cooking, baking, and playing with her black pug, Zoe. Edmonton, Canada is her permanent home, but her writing retreat/tiny home (named The Mini Winnie, of course) is on Vancouver Island.