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Stories of Little and Big Blossoms

Shirin Azari - Stories of Little and Big Blossoms
Conceived as a children's book, Stories of Little and Big Blossoms is a collection of illustrated short stories about Elham, a little Iranian girl exiled in Germany, and her difficulties to fit in this new environment. A poetic work on exile, friendship, courage and open-mindedness, inspired by the childhood of author and illustrator, Shirin Azari.
Stories of Little and Big Blossoms is about emotional ordeals like being a stranger in a strange land or losing a loved one, told from the perspective of children. Elham, for instance, a little girl from Iran, has to start over again in Germany, where everything—starting with the streets, buildings and playgrounds of her new city—is alien to her. And at school she feels insecure and excluded, and has a hard time making friends.
Shirin Azari processes her own childhood experiences in these stories. One night in 1996, her family had to flee Iran—there wasn't even time to say goodbye to relatives and friends. Over the years that followed, she attended no fewer than eleven different schools in Germany and suffered from never staying in one place for very long. Her life was one of unremitting restlessness, until she began working up her insights and emotions into children's stories. Azari's own story is the message she seeks to put across, for she learned her lesson the hard way: to struggle, to assert herself and never to give up. The tribulations of Elham, Jonathan, Aylin and her other hapless protagonists, illustrated with Azari's delicate, poetic drawings, reflect her own uprooted childhood and youth, and the need for the most innocent victims of all, namely the children, to be courageous, assertive and open-minded.
Shirin Azari (born 1981 in Bukan, Iran, lives and works in Berlin) is an Iranian illustrator, author, fashion designer and actress. She studied fashion design at Berlin's Lette-Verein and acting at the Film-Schauspielschule in Berlin and the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles. Since 2002 she has been Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer's muse and model. Her son Arian was born in 2016.
Texts by Shirin Azari.

Graphic design: Bogislav Ziemer.
 
published in November 2020
bilingual edition (English / German)
23,5 x 29,5 cm (hardcover)
92 pages (50 color ill.)
 
43.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-906803-80-7
EAN : 9783906803807
 
in stock


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