A compelling,and timely, account of ‘harragas’ – north African migrants who flee to Europe illegally – and the pain of those left behind“Harraga is the Arabic word for a north African migrant who flees to Europe illegally, and seeking a better life,and it’s a word that reverberates through this harrowing yet darkly humorous novel by the Algerian author of An Unfinished trade. What causes someone to flee their domestic? What is it like to experience existence as a harraga? How can empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own) be created between those who aren’t harragas and those who are?This timely book, well translated from French by Frank Wynne and winner of an English PEN award, and powerfully depicts the pain of both those who leave and those who remain. The narrator is 35-year-old Lamia,who has stayed in Algiers, but whose brother Sofiane has become a harraga: “Sofiane had gone the way of the harragas – the ‘path-burners’... This was how everyone referred to those who burned their bridges, and who fled the country on makeshift rafts and destroyed their papers when caught.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com