Stories of hell and hope: books to help us understand the refugee crisis and immigration

Danny – Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – is an illegal immigrant who for three years has been working as a cleaner in Sydney, living in fear of being 'dobbed in' to immigration and sent back to Sri Lanka. Careful not to draw attention to himself, he is as close as he's ever come to a 'normal' Australian life. But when one morning he hears a feale client of his has been murdered, his world comes crashing down. Because Danny thinks he knows who is responsible. Now he's faced with a choice: come forward with his knowledge about the crime and risk being deported, or say nothing, and let justice go undone? Over the course of a day, Danny must wrestle with his conscience and decide if a person without rights still has responsibilities.

In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani fled Iran and sought asylum in Australia, but instead, he was illegally imprisoned in the country’s notorious detention camp on Manus Island in northern Papua New Guinea. Painstakingly written on a smuggled mobile phone, one text at a time, No Friend But the Mountains is Boochani’s gripping story. 

Discover more about Behrouz's story here.

In this unique anthology, Kate Clanchy brings together the poetry of the students of Oxford Spires Academy, a small comprehensive school where over thirty languages are spoken and where teaching focuses on poetry, with prize-winning results. The poems give voice to the pain of migration, and the joy of building a new life in a new country.

Read a selection of poems from England: Poems From a School here.

Aleksander Hemon found himself an exile when, aged twenty-seven, war broke out in his home country of Sarajevo while he was on holiday in Boston. He was unable to return home for five years. In My Parents he tells the story of his parents’ immigration to Canada, and the lives which were disrupted by the war in Bosnia and the siege of Sarajevo. It is an intimate portrayal of family and devastating history of his native country. This Does Not Belong to You is an exhilarating, touching companion to My Parents, full of beautiful, poignant and funny memories of Hemon’s  Sarajevo childhood. 

Tamil Trinidadian Sam Selvon was the first black British writer to tell the Windrush generation story of the 1950s. Homesick Moses Aloetta has lived in London for years, and watches as new arrivals learn first to survive in, and then love, their new city. 

Derbyshire-born author Sahota’s novel depicts a disparate group of yong Indian men thrown together in a house in Sheffield, each having fled India in search of a new life. The Year of the Runaways spans India and England, the past and the present day, focusing on the pressures and pains of illegal immigration. 

Subtitled Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police, this is a first-hand account of Romanian oppression, and a deeply personal child’s eye view of a father’s rebellion, arrest and imprisonment. At 2 a.m. on 10 March 1983, Carmen Bugan’s father left the family home, alone. That afternoon, Carmen returned from school to find secret police in her living room. Her father’s protest against the regime had changed her life for ever. This is her story.

A love story which begins is Nigeria, then spins out into America and the UK as the lovers are divided by military rule in their home country, and reunited there fifteen years on. This is a powerful story of love, race and identity from the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.

One morning in London, two neighbours start to chat over the heads of their children. One is a writer, privileged and sheltered, one is a refugee from Kosovo. In Antigona and Me, Kate Clanchy tells the story of her nanny and her escape from the violence of war and her marriage. The kitchen-table conversations of writer and subject form the heart of this unusual tale.

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. Poet Jackie Kay takes a trip to Nigeria in search of her birth father in this warm but unsentimental journey into nature, nurture and identity.

Chinese-American Hong Kingston delves into her mother’s past in this tale of a changing China in the 1940s. Fusing myth and memoir, The Woman Warrior is a classic of feminist writing. Throughout her childhood, Maxine Hong Kingston listened to her mother's mesmerizing tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upwards. Growing up in a changing America, surrounded by Chinese myth and memory, this is her story of two cultures and one trenchant, lyrical journey into womanhood.