Alone in his room in a London madrasah, Musah tries on an abaya, a hijab and a shawl: he has crossed over - to outsiders he has become a Muslim woman. In a Pakistani haveli, his cousin, the nubile Iram, waits to fulfil the will of Dadaji, their grandfather. She and Musa must marry. When Musa's siblings and friends step in to help him fight tradition and achieve what he wants - a love match - their efforts lead to outrage, hilarity and, ultimately, tragedy.

Panel discussion on the effect of unlimited resource extraction on people and planet.

Reading Repair Cafe is a community project to bring people together to repair items rather than throw them away! Electronics, computers, bikes, clothes, tools etc. Please visit www.readingrepaircafe.org.uk to find out more.

Identifying common pests and diseases; managing pests and diseases organically; encouraging beneficial wildlife into the garden

Award-winning sustainable garden: 185 species, low maintenance, multi- use perennial planting, edible forest, water harvesting, hard landscaping with renewable/recycled/reused materials

SAPERE two-day Level 1 Foundation Course facilitated by Jen Simpson.

Politicians tell us we need to grow our economies, but is this possible on our finite planet? Is our drive to consume, leading us to social, economic and environmental collapse? Could a ‘post growth’ economy offer us happy and fulfilled lives within sustainable limits? Come and join in the debate led by Dr Andrew Mickleburgh.

By Negar Djavadi (tr by Tina Kover) – Iran/France
Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of fifty-two wives, and her parents, Darius and Sara, stalwart opponents of each regime that befalls them.
In this high-spirited, kaleidoscopic story, key moments of Iranian history, politics, and culture punctuate stories of family drama and triumph. Yet it is Kimiâ herself––punk-rock aficionado, storyteller extraordinaire, a Scheherazade of our time, and above all a modern woman divided between family traditions and her own “disorientalization”––who forms the heart of this bestselling and beloved novel. 320pp

SAPERE two-day Level 1 Foundation Course facilitated by Jen Simpson.

Director: Aki Kaurismäki. Winner: Palm Dog Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 2011. A town bands together to reunite a refugee boy with his mother in a tender and loving tale. The director presents a warm embrace to those who find themselves rootless. Le Havre offers them and moviegoers an enchanted port in the storm–a cinematic refuge from real life.

Identifying different types of soil; how to look after the soil; compost - why we make it, what we use to make it and how to use it; compost bins; other composting methods

The Global Teachers’ Award (GTA) is a national award supporting teachers in developing skills, confidence and practical approaches to embed global learning in the curriculum and promote informed, active Global Citizenship with pupils.

Award-winning sustainable garden: 185 species, low maintenance, multi- use perennial planting, edible forest, water harvesting, hard landscaping with renewable/recycled/reused materials

By Akwaeke Emezi – Nigeria (hardback £10)
Ada is the second child of Saul, a Nigerian doctor, and his Malaysian wife Saachi, a nurse. When Ada is still a child, Saachi leaves to work abroad, first in Saudi Arabia and then in the UK. Although she visits her family in Nigeria once or twice each year, she will never again live in the home she once made with her proud and impatient husband. At 16, Ada also leaves Nigeria, for the United States, where she spends her turbulent college years in Virginia. All the while, there is a claim on her head , “for being born incorrectly, for not returning, for crossing the ocean sifted with death”. While the effects of this claim might read like a curse, they are really a manifestation of a demand that she follow a predestined path. Ada is an ogbanje, a spirit child who is born repeatedly to the same parents, taunting and torturing them with many reincarnations. While most ogbanjes die as children, Ada survives into adulthood, constantly struggling against a pull towards self-annihilation.
When Ada finds a measure of peace, it is not a consequence of eliminating any of her selves: instead, it emanates from accepting that she is “a village full of faces and a compound full of bones, translucent thousands”. When we return to Nigeria, the narrator is Ada: not the tortured Ada who made her way tentatively into earlier chapters in the form of poems and diary entries, but a voice infused with We’s poetic cadence and Asughara’s blistering yet intimate tone. It is a fitting culmination for the extraordinary journeyFreshwater charts, a manifestation of Ada’s realisation that she is irrevocably an amalgamation of all her varied and even divergent selves. 240pp

Gardening organically; watering wisely; weeds and how to deal with them; mulching - why we mulch and materials we can use

The Global Teachers’ Award (GTA) is a national award supporting teachers in developing skills, confidence and practical approaches to embed global learning in the curriculum and promote informed, active Global Citizenship with pupils.

Reading Repair Cafe is a community project to bring people together to repair items rather than throw them away! Electronics, computers, bikes, clothes, tools etc. Please visit www.readingrepaircafe.org.uk to find out more.

Director: Eduardo de la Serna & Lucas Marcheggiano. Winner: IBAFF International Film Festival, 2011. Affectionately humorous documentary about Daniel Burmeister, a self-taught Argentinian film maker who spends his working life travelling around remote rural villages in search of locations and actors for his amateur films. He transforms these sleepy villages into bustling film sets and the bored populace into avid performers. A marvellously human story that celebrates the true spirit of creativity and the warmth of community.

Panel discussion on different fair trade labels and what they mean with: Erinch Sahan - Chief Executive, World Fair Trade Organisation. Justin Avern - Head of Media and Communications, Fairtrade Foundation. Cathy Pawson - Co-founder of Zaytoun. Chaired by Laura Cave - BAFTS-Fair Trade Network UK. Live music by La Mort Subite in the Global Cafe (entrance �5)

Between 1995-2015 worldwide production of palm oil quadrupled. It is expected to quadruple again by 2050. Oil palm plantations account for 10% of all global cropland. What is driving this massive increase? What effect is it having on people and planet? What can we do? Film and discussion.

Award-winning sustainable garden: 185 species, low maintenance, multi- use perennial planting, edible forest, water harvesting, hard landscaping with renewable/recycled/reused materials

by Khaled Khalifa (tr by Leri Price) – Syria
Khalifa portrays his native city under the grip of the Assad regimes though the lives of one family over three generations. In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, the family descends into tragedy and ruin. Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, seeking but never finding salvation. She and her siblings and mother are slowly choked in violence and decay, as their lives are plundered by a brutal regime. Set between the 1960s and 2000s, the novel unravels the systems of fear and control under Assad. With eloquence and startling honesty, it speaks of the persecution of a whole society. The story shifts in time and between characters, but Aleppo as a character is a constant, its culture and cuisine, a city with a vibrant life. Khalifa, in lush and sensual prose, chronicles the collapse of the city: “Cities die, just like people.” 256pp

Dir: Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, The Pinochet Case) Winner: European Documentary, European Film Awards, 2010 While astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared search, even after 25 years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families histories. Gradually the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the Chilean women come together.

Tips for successful seed sowing; top ten easy to grow vegetables; sowing seeds inside vs outside; common problems; other methods of propagation, e.g division, cuttings

By Min Jin Lee – Korea/Japan
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.
Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story. Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival. 560pp