REFUGEE WEEK (June 17-23) highlights the plight of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide, and celebrates their resilience.

This year’s theme “Our Home” reminds us that “we share the Earth’s resources, climate and its challenges. As we speak, millions of people are being displaced from their homes because of the climate crisis. But exchanging knowledge, both new and traditional, can help us in practical ways to build hope for the future.”

We are encouraged to extend our warmth and hospitality beyond our own homes and make our neighbourhoods more welcoming. Simple acts like organising a walk for peace, sharing a book about the refugee experience or sending a message of welcome encourages empathy and understanding and helps everyone feel like they belong.

Herewith my pick of recent novels that illuminate the refugee experience and the dangerous journeys they undertake in search of safety, as well as books that examine the history of displacement and the various reasons for exile and migration.

The term “illegal asylum seeker” is disingenuous. As the Refugee Council state: “there is no such thing as an ‘illegal’ or ‘bogus’ person seeking asylum. Under international law, anyone has the right to apply for asylum in any country that has signed the 1951 Convention… people fleeing persecution may have to use irregular means in order to escape and claim asylum in another country.”
On April 22, our government implemented its inhumane Rwanda policy. There are few legal ways to travel to the UK in order to seek asylum and refugees trying to reach Britain today invariably have to use unorthodox means. They face perilous journeys, impossible bureaucracy and are often greeted with  hostile public opinion.
But as Matthew Lockwood illustrates in his far-reaching study this hasn’t always been the way. Great Britain once cherished its outward image as a safe haven for those displaced by religious persecution, political violence or economic crisis – an island of stability in the midst of a violent world. In This Land of Promise: A History of Refugees and Exiles in Britain (William Collins), Lockwood overturns many popular modern-day misconceptions about Britain’s history of immigration. Exiles and refugees have been a constant presence here across the centuries and intrinsic to shaping the country.

Aamna Mohdin’s Scattered: The Making and Unmaking of a Refugee (Bloomsbury Circus) explores the cost and consequences of displacement. Mohdin is uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience and its aftershocks. Her parents were refugees, fleeing the Somali civil war. Her arrival in the UK aged seven had been preceded by an early childhood in a refugee camp, followed by years of exile and desperation, as her family fought for a place to call home. This is an epic tale of returns and reunions; and a celebration of family and belonging.

In Tawseef Khan’s novel Determination (Footnote Press), an immigration solicitor tasked with running the family law firm works under the shadow of the UK government’s “hostile environment”. Jamila is regularly woken in the middle of the night by frantic phone calls from clients on the cusp of deportation. After a breakdown, she is forced to seek change, while committing herself to a career devoted to helping others. We meet the sympathetic staff of Shah & Co Solicitors, and their clients who have to jump through hoops to create a life for themselves while trying to achieve some semblance of normality.

Sulaiman Addonia’s The Seers (Prototype) explores intergenerational histories and colonial trauma alongside the psychological and erotic lives of its characters as their identities are shaped by the bureaucratic processes of the UK asylum system. Set around a foster home in Kilburn and in the squares of Bloomsbury, his novel follows the first weeks of a homeless Eritrean refugee in London.

Anders Lustgarten’s Three Burials (Hamish Hamilton) holds a mirror up to contemporary Britain. Cherry, a bandit queen on the run, drives a pink soft-top convertible through the badlands of south-east England. She’s never felt more Thelma & Louise – except there are three of them in the car and one of them is dead. How did a head nurse and mother of two end up driving a handcuffed policeman and the corpse of a murdered refugee on a journey to find justice? Pursued by a racist, shaven-headed officer of the law – not to mention her husband and daughter – what else can a woman with a conscience do?

Goran Baba Ali’s The Glass Wall (Afsana Press), illuminates the experiences of displaced people, their persecution, struggle, and desire for survival. After a perilous quest through an unforgiving desert, a 19-year-old refugee arrives at a glass wall guarded by an old man. In order to be granted entry to the city, he is told he must recount the story of who he is, where he has come from, and why he should be granted asylum. Having barely survived his journey, the young man wants to avoid reliving the pain of his past. But desperate for another chance, he starts recounting tales from his childhood, encompassing the history of his family and his country. But will his story guarantee his safety?

Ammar Kalia’s debut novel A Person Is a Prayer (Oldcastle) is about one family’s migration from Kenya and India to England told over three separate days, across six decades. He explores their search for happiness, through these multiple migrations, and the ever-shifting nature of “home”. Ammar was inspired by his own family’s journey to Hounslow and how the choices they made rippled down the generations. The book culminates in the journey of three siblings to spread their father’s ashes in the Ganges.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here (Picador) looks at America’s immigration issues, and tells the epic story of people whose lives ebb and flow across the border and those who help and hinder them. Jonathan Blitzer attempts to answer not only the question of how America got here, but the vital question of who we are and who we want to be in our liberal Western democracies, whether we are incarcerating children on our southern borders or watching them drown on the shores of the Mediterranean.

• https://refugeeweek.org.uk/simple-acts/
• https://www.jocoxfoundation.org/our-work/stronger-communities/great-get-together/

• Lucy Popescu is the editor of the refugee anthologies A Country of Refugee and A Country to Call Home (Unbound)