6 Books With Incredible Refugee Narratives
Most of us will never understand what it’s like to leave our homes and flee our country. On World Refugee Day, we're celebrating the power of books to unite people and foster empathy. Within the pages of fiction, we find the voices of those forced to leave their homes, seeking safety and a brighter future. These tales of resilience and hope remind us that every refugee has a narrative that deserves to be heard and understood. Through literature, we can bridge borders and language, enabling us to better understand one another.
These 6 books that encapsulate the refugee experience…
In the Sea There Are Crocodiles –Fabio Geda
One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah's mother tells him three things: don't use drugs or weapons, don't cheat, don't steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn't there. Ten-year-old Enaiatollah is left alone at the border of Pakistan to fend for himself.
In a book that takes a true story and shapes it into a beautiful piece of fiction, Italian novelist Fabio Geda describes Enaiatollah's remarkable five-year journey from Afghanistan to Italy. His ordeal took him through Iran, Turkey and Greece, working on building sites in order to pay people-traffickers, and enduring the physical misery of dangerous border crossings. A series of almost implausible strokes of fortune enabled him to get to Turin, find help from an Italian family and meet Fabio Geda, with whom he became friends.
This true story is a universal narrative of stoicism in the face of fear, and the search for a place where life is liveable. Filled with perseverance and endurance, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles will be loved by all fans of historical fiction.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay's cramped New York bedroom, his nerve-racking escape from Prague finally achieved. Little does he realise that this is the beginning of an extraordinary friendship and even more fruitful business partnership. Together, they create a comic strip called 'The Escapist', its superhero a Nazi-busting saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world. 'The Escapist' makes their fortune, but Joe can think of only one thing: how can he effect a real-life escape, and free his family from the tyranny of Hitler?
Chabon's exceptional novel is a thrilling tight-rope walk between high comedy and bitter tragedy. A heart-wrenching story of escape, love and adventure, it will keep you up reading all night.
The Boat People – Sharon Bala
When a rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches Vancouver's shores, the young father thinks he and his six-year-old son can finally start a new life. Instead, the group is thrown into a detention processing center, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among the "boat people" are members of a separatist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these terrorists now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees become subject to heavy interrogation, Mahindan begins to fear that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum.
This is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis. A haunting novel that will stay with you.
The Night Diary – Veera Hiranandani
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.
Told through Nisha's letters to her mother, The Night Diary is a heartfelt story of one girl's search for home, for her own identity...and for a hopeful future. Hiranandani is a master storyteller, providing an insightful window into a fraught historical moment.
Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin
One night, not long after the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh flee their village and embark on a perilous boat journey to Hong Kong. Their parents and four younger siblings make the crossing in another vessel but as weeks go by it becomes clear that only one party has survived the voyage.
Anh, Thanh and Minh suddenly find themselves alone in the world, without family or home. They travel on, navigating refugee camps and resettlement centres until, by a twist of fate, they arrive in Thatcher's Britain. Here they must somehow build new lives with only each other to turn to, but will that be enough in a place that doesn't seem to want them?
In this piercing debut, the siblings' faltering journey is deftly interwoven with the voice of their lost younger brother, Dao, following them from a place between the living and the dead, and the records of an unknown researcher intent on gathering the strands of their story.
Revelatory and inventive, Wandering Souls paints a heart-wrenching portrait of a family in unimaginable adversity while exploring the healing power of stories. Exquisitely constructed, every page is brilliant, beautiful and filled with unwavering hope.
Sea Prayer – Khaled Hosseini
On a moonlit beach a father cradles his sleeping son as they wait for dawn to break and a boat to arrive. He speaks to his boy of the long summers of his childhood, recalling his grandfather's house in Syria, the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, the bleating of his grandmother's goat, the clanking of her cooking pots. And he remembers, too, the bustling city of Homs with its crowded lanes, its mosque and grand souk, in the days before the sky spat bombs and they had to flee.
When the sun rises they and those around them will gather their possessions and embark on a perilous sea journey in search of a new home.
With superb illustrations, Sea Prayer sings with tenderness: a hymn to a destroyed country and a broken life. Hosseini is a storyteller of immense talent, and with profound depth and compassion, he writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives.
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