Aamna Mohdin is a gifted storyteller with a compelling story in which resilience and humanity triumph over tragedy and displacement. She is a trusted, honest and at times humorous guide on a journey that is fraught, brave and at times dangerous. In a moment where refugees are often talked about but rarely heard from, her voice breaks through not because it is loud but because it is lyrical

GARY YOUNGE

An absorbingly written account of exile combined with journalistic research and rigour. Aamna is such a thoughtful writer, and her voice, and this testimony, offers an essential bridge between discourse on migration in Britain and the lived experiences of many Britons, which are too often disregarded

SALLY HAYDEN, author of the Orwell Prize-winning My Fourth Time, We Drowned

The only way out of the crisis of exclusion sweeping across the Atlantic Ocean is storytelling that overcomes apathy and scapegoating in favour of empathy and hospitality. In so luminously recounting the story of her family, and the exodus from Somalia to the United Kingdom she and her parents have lived, Aamna Mohdin achieves an imaginative breakthrough that everyone should read

SAMUEL MOYN, Professor of Law and History at Yale University

Reporting for the Guardian from the Calais refugee camp, Mohdin felt a jolt of recognition: she had once been a child refugee herself. From there she travels to Somalia, the country her parents fled, and back into her own past.

Guardian, The books to look out for in 2024

Powerful and evocative

Bookseller, Editor's Choice