As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow

A year ago, before the revolution, Salama watched her brother marry her best friend, Layla, and wondered when her own love story might begin. Now she works at the hospital - helping those she can, closing the eyes of those she can't. Layla and her unborn baby are all Salama has left.

Unless you count Khawf. But he's a hallucination; a symptom of the horrors she's seen. Every day he urges Salama to leave. Every day she refuses.

Until she crosses paths with Kenan, the boy with the vivid green eyes, who wants to stay and risk his life for everything Syria could be .

Zoulfa Katouh is a Canadian writer with Syrian roots. A trilingual pharmacist, currently pursuing a master's in drug sciences, Zoulfa is the first Syrian author to be published in both the US and the UK in the young adult category. When she's not talking to herself in the woodland forest, she's drinking iced coffee, baking aesthetic cookies and cakes, and telling everyone who will listen about how BTS paved the way. A dream of hers is to get Kim Nam-joon to read one of her books. As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow is her debut novel.

Twitter: @thelemonwitch_