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Sea Prayer

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4.05 43,337 ratings 4,437 reviews
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A short, powerful, illustrated book written by Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the fathe... MoreA short, powerful, illustrated book written by Khaled Hosseini in response to the current refugee crisis, Sea Prayer is composed in the form of a letter, from a father to his son, on the eve of their journey. Watching over his sleeping son, the father reflects on the dangerous sea-crossing that lies before them. It is also a vivid portrait of their life in Homs, Syria, before the war, and of that city's swift transformation from a home into a deadly war zone.

Impelled to write this story by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed upon the beach in Turkey in September 2015, Hosseini hopes to pay tribute to the millions of families, like Kurdi's, who have been splintered and forced from home by war and persecution, and he will donate author proceeds from this book to the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation to help fund lifesaving relief efforts to help refugees around the globe. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the UNHCR, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. Less

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Community Reviews

Average rating 4.05  ·  43,337 ratings  ·  4,437 reviews

rated it it was amazing
9 months ago

Shelves: favourites
Truly one of the best books of 2018. Impactful and difficult, reading this with my 8 year old was a daunting yet necessary task.

rated it it was amazing
about 2 years ago

Khaled Hosseini's Sea Prayer isn't a book—it's a poem. But it's more than a poem—it is, in essence, a letter written from father to son, a prayer lifted up on the eve of a journey away from their war-torn country, a journey which could prove tremendously dangerous.

In les
...more

rated it it was amazing
over 2 years ago

I'm really not sure how to describe this book. It's a letter from a father to his son, the night before they leave their war-torn country for a safer place. It's not great and the father is terrified because it involves a great deal of danger (especially for the portion of t ...more

rated it really liked it
about 2 years ago

Shelves: poetry , picture-books
This is a very short book—a picture book, really—but because of the subject matter, it feels almost heavy in my hands right now. My eyes also understand that this is no bedtime story.

It isn’t the most original piece ever written, but do we really need ‘‘originality’’ when w
...more

rated it it was amazing
about 2 years ago

Wave after wave......

From calm seas of memories to the over-powering turbulence of the present, Khaled Hosseini presents a story drifting from father to son in the form of a tragic letter. From the shores of chaos come words that touch the lips and soften the heart in slow s
...more

rated it liked it
over 1 year ago

EDIT 3, 3 stars. So I've been thinking about this for a few months now. A few months ago I read Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love and I loved it. I thought if I liked that one, why couldn't I like this one, since they are similar - picture books, targeted mostly at childre ...more

rated it it was amazing
almost 2 years ago

I'm speechless and crying. With a few words and some illustrations this guy told the world all that is to tell

rated it it was amazing
almost 2 years ago

Shelves: fiction , short-stories , 2018
Sea Prayer is a beautifully illustrated short story (very short), where a father reminisces with his sleeping son in his arms. They are refugees waiting for the next stage of their journey. The father recalls how he and his brothers enjoyed their summers at their grandfather ...more

rated it really liked it
about 2 years ago

Shelves: 2018-read
I read this short offering by Hosseini, an author I very much admire, in a matter of minutes. In the title is the word prayer, and it is a prayer to a child, a people, young people who will never know the country of their birth, Syria, without bombs, towns in ruins and starv ...more

rated it it was amazing
5 months ago

Shelves: short-stories , syria , war , letters
Sea Prayer is like that rare songbird singing on a winter morning, only to fly away in a moment. Inspired by the haunting image of young Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on the beach in Turkey in September 2015, it is a touching tribute to the f ...more

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Book details

Kindle Edition, 48 pages
Published September 18th 2018 by Riverhead Books (first published August 30th 2018
ASIN
B079WM7Z7T
Edition language
English
Original title
Sea Prayer

About this author

138,479 followers
Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1965. In 1970 Hosseini and his family moved to Iran where his father worked for the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tehran. In 1973 Hosseini's family returned to Kabul, and Hosseini's youngest brother was born in July of that year.
In 1976, when Hosseini was 11 years old, Hosseini's father obtained a job in Paris, France, and moved the family there. They were u
...more

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Quotes

I said to you,
"Hold my hand.
Nothing bad will happen."

These are only words.
A father's tricks,
It slays your father,
your faith in him.
Because all I can think tonight is
how deep the sea,
and how vast, how indifferent.
How powerless I am to protect you from it.

All I can do is pray.
I have heard it said we are the uninvited.
We are the unwelcome.
We should take our misfortune elsewhere.
But I hear your mother's voice,
over the tide.
and she whispers in my ear,
"Oh, but if they saw, my darling.
Even half of what you have.
If only they saw.
They would say kinder things, surely.
My dear Martin, in the long summer of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfather’s farmhouse outside of Homs.

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