Books for World Refugee Day

From my Instagram post

World Refugee Day 2021

World Refugee Day falls on June 20th every year. It is a day to honour refugees around the globe. To raise awarenes and build empathy about their plight. To celebrate the resilience of a people who were forced flee their homes and rebuild their lives elsewere.

And there’s no better way for the reading community to celebrate this than picking up a book and walking in the shoes of some of those individuals who made the journey across.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a small list of books you can pick up to celebrate World Refugee Day this year. I made it a point to only include memoirs and true stories as, although there is a large collection of fictional work on refugee stories, there is something special about reading the story of a real-life survivor.

I think many people worry about picking up memoirs by refugees because it can seem like a book full of pain and gloom. Yes, their journey’s to safety are never easy. Yes, they can be harrowing and painful. But, on that note, I’ve never closed a memoir without a smile on my face.

Because the story of a refugee is not just a story of fleeing persecution and conflict. The story of a refugee is a story of strength and courage. It’s a story of new beginnings, a story of hope.

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So without further ado, books to read this World Refugee Day.

1. 🌍 The New Odyssey by Patrick Kingsley

This is Patrick Kingsley’s, a former Guardian migration correspondent, unparalleled account of his travels to 17 countries along the migrant trail, meeting hundreds of refugees making epic odysseys across deserts, seas and mountains to reach the holy grail of Europe, along with the smugglers who help them on their way, the coastguards, the volunteers and feed them, and the border guards trying to keep them out. And the politicians looking the other way.

Read my full review here.

2. 🇰🇪 City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence

The stories of nine individuals interweaved to show what life is like in the worlds largest refugee camp - Dabaab in Kenya. To the charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it is a 'nursery for terrorists’; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort.

3. 🇦🇫 The Lightless Sky by Gulwali Passarlay

The journey of a 12 year old, from being a boy of the mountains in Afghanistan to the 2012 London Olympics Torch bearer. A journey that would lead him across eight countries, enduring imprisonment, hunger, brutality. A harrowing experience yet one full of compassion and hope.

4. 🇦🇫 The Boy With Two Hearts by Hamed Amiri

A family of five fleeing through Russia to Europe after the Taliban gave an order for the execution of the mother. But that was not all. There was also a race against time to get to the UK particularly. Hameds older brother had a rare heart condition, treatable only in a few hospitals around the world. UK was their only hope.

Read my full review here.

5. 🇸🇾 The Pianist of Yarmouk by Aeham Ahmad

On the outskirts of war-torn Damascus a man pushes his piano into the streets and begins to play. He plays even though he knows he could be killed for doing so. Soon he becomes a beacon of hope and resistance. But eventually he is forced to make a terrible choice - between staying and waiting to die, or saving himself, but this would mean abandoning his family . . .

6. 🇸🇾 Butterfly by Yusra Mardini

From refugee to Olympian. In 2015 Yusra and her sister saved their sinking dinghy bound for Greece by pushing it for three and a half hours in open water. This is the story of that remarkable woman, whose journey started in a war-torn suburb of Damascus to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

7. 🇧🇦 The Last Refuge by Hasan Nuhanović

A powerful first-hand account of the barbarism of those years leading up to the massacre in Srebrenica. The growing threat of Serb nationalism forced Hasan and his family to flee to mountainous countryside. After much travel they finally reached Srebrenica, their last refuge. A town under the protection of a small UN force. But then the Bosnian-Serb army laid siege to the town.

8. 🇵🇸 In Search of Fatima by Ghada Karmi

The memoir of a 1948 Palestinian refugee. Ghada Karmi takes the reader through her childhood in Palestine, her flight to Britain after the catastrophe of 1948, and her coming of age in the coffee bars of Golders Green - the middle-class Jewish quarter in North London.

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(ps. Some of these I’m yet to read myself, they’re eyeing me from my shelf!)