Awards
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Essential reading on timely topics. |
Staff Pick
At a time when refugees are regarded, at best, as nameless victims or, at worst, as security threats, author Ben Rawlence brings us a searing book of nonfiction that reveals in horrifying detail what life has been reduced to inside the world's largest refugee camp. Rawlence spent four years in northern Kenya with the residents of Dadaab, a U.N.-administered settlement the size of Atlanta where half a million refugees must contend daily with malnourishment, disease, exploitation, and violence. With great compassion and the rigor of an investigative journalist, Rawlence tells the unforgettable stories of nine individuals stuck in the camp while exploring the larger forces that brought them there — and continue to hold them prisoner. Gripping, eye-opening, and infuriating, City of Thorns is the kind of book that may just spark great social change. It's something we should all read and talk about. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian
crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a 'nursery for terrorists'; to
the western media, it is a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a
million residents, it is their last resort.
Situated hundreds
of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert
of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no
other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks or plastic, its entire
economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the
course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a
strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have
come there seeking sanctuary. Among them are Guled, a former child
soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by
pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable
youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her
education.
In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the
stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to
sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there.
Rawlence combines intimate storytelling with broad socio-political
investigative journalism, doing for Dadaab what Katherinee Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers did for the Mumbai slums. Lucid, vivid and illuminating, City of Thorns is an urgent human story with deep international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dadaab home.
Review
“With remarkable intimacy, Rawlence reveals the humanity of these people
in crisis who must struggle to survive in the overcrowded camp....A
significant, timely, and gloomy tale that reveals the human costs of a
growing world crisis.” Kirkus Reviews
Review
“That Rawlence has managed to capture so much of this unlikely city’s
chaos and confusion in a narrative that is very nearly impossible to put
down is an achievement in reportage that few have matched. Dadaab’s
half a million residents could not have asked for a better champion than
this researcher for Human Rights Watch, and while the facts and figures
he shares are stunning, it is the nine individuals whose stories he
focuses on who give the book its heart…Comparisons to Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012)
are spot-on. Rawlence has written a book that just might change the
world or, at the very least, awaken readers to one criminal forgotten
corner of it. A tour de force.” Booklist (starred review)
Review
“City of Thorns…brilliantly details the intimate histories of
residents of Dadaab, a massive, United Nations-maintained camp in Kenya
for people stuck in legal limbo after escaping from sectarian violence
in Somalia.” Chicago Tribune
Review
“Magisterial….We see Dadaab through an accumulation of vivid impressions….[The book] moves like a thriller.” Los Angeles Times
Review
“[A]remarkable book…. Like Dadaab itself, the story has no conclusion.
Iti is a portrait, beautifully and moving painted. And it is more than
that. At a time when newspapers are filled with daily images of refugees
arriving in boats on Europe’s shores, when politicians and governments
grapple with solutions to migration and erect ever larger walls and
fences, it is an important reminder that a vast majority of the world’s
refugees never get as far as a boat or a border of the developed world.
They remain, like the inhabitants of Dadaab, in an indefinite limbo of
penury and fear, unwanted and largely forgotten.” The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
BEN RAWLENCE is a former researcher for Human Rights Watch in the horn of Africa. He is the author of Radio Congo and has written for a wide range of publications, including The Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Prospect. He lives in the Black Mountains in Wales with his wife and daughter.