Description

‘Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn’t stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe. Refugees and not only refugees hungering for the north, pushing their way through the barriers of waves, human failings and unrealistic dreams.The novel has all the weight of art with the sting of breaking news. I loved it. It is Habila at his best’ Leila Aboulela

Poignant and beautifully sculpted, a novel about exile, identity and the many kinds of travellers moving through our modern world – from the Caine Prize-winning author of Oil on Water and Waiting for an Angel

Modern Europe is a melting pot of migrating souls: among them a Nigerian American couple on a prestigious arts fellowship, a transgender film student seeking the freedom of authenticity, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and child in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper trying to save his young daughter from forced marriage. And, though the divide between the self-chosen exiles and those who are forced to leave home may feel solid, in reality such boundaries are endlessly shifting and frighteningly soluble.

Moving from a Berlin nightclub to a Sicilian refugee camp to the London apartment of a Malawian poet, Helon Habila evokes a rich mosaic of migrant experiences. And through his characters’ interconnecting fates, he traces the extraordinary pilgrimages we all might make in pursuit of home.

Publisher Review

In an era of mass migration, Habila suggests, stories are a common ground, a means of making ourselves at home with our homelessness. * Literary Review * Yarns of persecution, paranoia, even manslaughter, unspool across its patchwork pattern. Habila tells them with cunning, flair and a sleight-of-hand that lightens even the gloomiest scenes. * The Spectator * A quietly haunting novel that captures the untethered, unreal nature of migrant and refugee existence. * Metro * Adroitly teasing out the rich quiddity of his characters' diverse journeys, he instead makes the simple yet valuable point that refugees' lives are as irreducibly complex as anyone else's. * The Observer * a parable of our times and Habila tells it beautifully, shedding poignant light on the world of the dispossessed and the stateless. * Mail on Sunday * At once intimate and expansive, Travellers captivated me from the very first pages * Aminatta Forna * Describing worlds and convergences that are unforgettable, Helon Habila writes of individual lives - pulled apart by our wars, our failed states and our deepest fears - with insight and searing compassion * Madeleine Thien * Urgent, deeply empathetic, and resisting easy answers, TRAVELERS follows the interconnected lives of African immigrants and refugees in Europe and examines the meanings of freedom, diaspora and home. Habila is a masterful storyteller, and this novel a riveting testament to the power of fiction. Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the sting of breaking news. It faces the urgent questions of our times and doesn't settle for easy answers...it is indeed Habila at his best. * Leila Aboulela * A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more -- Elif Shafak Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refugee crisis... * The Guardian *